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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ESSAY ON ADDISON 



MACAULAY'S 



ESSAY ON ADDISON 



Edited with Notes 



HERBERT AUGUSTINE SMITH, Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN YALE COLLEGE 







BOSTON, U.S.A. 

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

Cbc Sttbrnirum \irtea 

1898 

TWO COWK KtCtlVED 

1 



Tf? 330 I 



676 

Copyright, 1898, by 
HERBERT AUGUSTINE SMITH 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



PREFACE 



In the preparation of this little volume the editor has had 
in mind the needs of two different classes of students, 
intending it both for school and for college use. In conse- 
quence, the notes are not quite what they would have been 
had they been made for either class alone. Some of them 
will seem to a college Freshman or Sophomore unneces- 
sarily elementary; while the school teacher may find the 
allusions to contemporary history and literature unneces- 
sarily full, and implying a knowledge somewhat beyond that 
of his pupils. 

Nevertheless, the editor trusts that its usefulness has in 
neither case been impaired. It does not take much experi- 
ence with a college class to discover the possibilities of 
ignorance there ; it is unsafe to assume a general knowledge 
of anything not required by the entrance examination, and 
no seed of information can be too elementary to drop 
somewhere into virgin soil. On the other hand, every 
school contains a considerable percentage of boys who are, 
in general information and wider reading, far ahead of their 
fellows. It does no harm to provide for the needs of these 
boys ; and the skillful teacher will find the utilization in the 
class-room of their knowledge an efficient aid to the instruc- 
tion of their less Intelligent companions. 

The vital question in preparing a work of this kind is, oi 
course, how to make the study both instructive and stimu- 
lating. Some of our friends are telling us that we are in 



vi preface. 

faint and swiftly passing shadows. Therefore he must 
grapple with every sentence, and make it yield him a 
meaning — clear, definite, well grasped. To such a process 
every new name and uncomprehended allusion opposes an 
obstacle. His previous light reading has not called for 
concentrated effort ; it is hard to keep his plough in this 
heavier soil, and at the slightest obstruction it leaps quite 
from the furrow, and scratches along on top. So the connec- 
tion is broken and the attention dispersed. Granted that the 
intellectual exertion necessary to grasp the meaning word 
by word may consume all the mental energy available, 
leaving the reader powerless to carry the thought connec- 
tion or to read with literary appreciation, it still remains 
true that a sentence which conveys no meaning can neither 
add to knowledge nor give pleasure. The child in his first 
reading lessons halts and stumbles, and finds all his energies 
absorbed in the effort to recognize and pronounce the 
words; but he will never learn to read except by repeating 
the process until the mind learns to do mechanically what 
now absorbs all the attention. So with the schoolboy. 
Plodding is hard, but it is only by plodding now that he 
will eventually be able to do something better worth while. 

In annotating this essay for school use, the editor has 
sought to adapt the notes to three ends. They aim in the 
first place at helping the pupil to grasp the sense of the 
text. And as there is a great difference between reading 
and studying an essay, and as the discipline and increased 
power which study is intended to result in can be gained 
only by somewhat close application, the sense which the 
pupil should try to grasp is the sense of each sentence and 
each word. In this connection it should be said that no 
attempt has been made to provide a substitute for the dic- 
tionary, which should be resorted to whenever its use is 
necessary. The second object of the notes is to make the? 



PREFACE. vii 

study additionally profitable by imparting such general 
information connected with the substance of the essay as 
the preparatory-school student may reasonably be expected 
to be interested in, and to remember. Here again the line 
has been drawn in the case of many things which the 
editor, but not the teacher, should assume that " every 
schoolboy knows." And, finally, they seek also to interest 
the reader in literature by familiarizing him with the liter- 
ary history of the time, and stimulating him, under the 
helpful direction of his teacher, to take up in the way of 
outside reading some of the writings of Addison and his 
contemporaries. 

One thing the editor feels very strongly, and that is the 
importance of a knowledge of English history in any study 
connected with its literature, and the appalling ignorance 
of it which is often to be found even among fairly well 
educated people. The Essay on Addison is a historical 
essay, and, though its history is mainly literary history, it 
calls for an acquaintance with the important political events 
of the time. No teacher should fail to supply to his class, 
before beginning the essay, an outline of English history 
from 1685 to 1719, including the dates of accession of 
William and Mary, Anne, and George I., and to see that, 
with the aid of the notes, Macaulay's references are always 
clearly understood. 

In college classes it is thought that this book may be 
serviceable in two ways. It may be used for auxiliary 
reading in connection with class-room study of Addison, or 
it may be used as the starting-point for a study of the liter- 
ary history of the time. For this purpose the notes have 
been prepared with a good deal of care, and will, it is 
trusted, be found correct, or as nearly so as conscientious 
labor can reasonably hope to make them. The editor would 
be indeed presumptuous to think of laying down methods foj 



Viii PREFACE. 

teachers of advanced work; yet he may, perhaps, be permitted 
to suggest that a student who wishes to study closely Addi- 
son and his time may rind it worth while to take to pieces, 
as it were, such an essay as Macaulay's, and hunt up the 
evidence on which each statement rests. A close comparison 
of the present essay with the corresponding ones of Thackeray 
and Johnson, and with Mr. Courthope's k Life of Addison ' 
in the English Men of Letters Series, followed by a tracing 
back of the various facts recorded in these to their origins, 
may serve to somewhat advanced students as an introduc- 
tion to a thorough and intimate knowledge of the writers 
who flourished in the days of Queen Anne. 



LIFE OF MACAULAY. 



Thomas BaBington Macaulay was born at the home oi 
his father's brother-in-law, Thomas Babington, at Rothley, 
in Leicestershire, on Oct. 25, 1800. His early home was in 
the suburbs of London. His father, the son of a Scotch 
minister, had lived for some years in the British West Indies. 
Having learned from practical experience what slavery 
meant, he resigned the lucrative position which his abilities 
had won, and returned to England to join the little band of 
devoted philanthropists who were fighting to put an end to 
the slave-trade, and to abolish slavery in the English depend- 
encies. Macaulay was his oldest child. 

The boy gave early evidence of unusual powers. From 
the age of three years he was a voracious reader , before he 
was eight he began to amuse himself with such literary 
labors as the composition of epic and narrative poems, 
hymns, epitomes of history, arguments for Christianity. To 
a wonderfully exact and ready memory was joined intellectual 
restlessness and imaginative activity- His productions were 
of course worthless as literature, but they show the bent ol 
the child's mind. He talked the language of books; the 
world in which he lived was quite apart from that of the 
ordinary schoolboy. 

In the outdoor sports and games of schoolboys he was 
never proficient. ik IIe COllld neither swim, nor row, nor 
drive, nor skate, nor shoot." To the end of his life he 
remained one of the clumsiest of men. His gloves never 



X LIFE OF MACAULAY. 

fitted ; his clothes were ill put on ; he could not strop a 
razor, and when he shaved he usually cut himself. Even 
with this physical awkwardness he might in a large school 
have been drawn into the life around him. But his prep- 
aration for the university was at small private schools, so 
that he was never really a boy among boys. He was not 
unpopular, but he cared little for anything but reading ; in 
this his activity was prodigious. He read with great rapidity, 
and yet accurately ; and the power of his memory is almost 
incredible. He could repeat long poems word for word 
after a single reading ; he knew Pa?-adise Lost and Pilgrim's 
Progress by heart. Forty years later he recalled and recited 
two worthless newspaper poems which he had happened to 
read one day while waiting in a coffee-room, and had never 
thought of in the interval. 

On his entrance upon university life, which was at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, in 1818, the social side of the greatest 
talker of his generation began to develop. Macaulay had 
never been a mere bookworm ; even at school he had been 
distinguished for the vehemence and self-confidence of his 
conversation, and the pleasure he took in it ; and contem- 
porary politics had always had the keenest interest for him. 
At his father's house he had been accustomed to hear public 
affairs discussed by men of distinguished ability, who were 
themselves intimately concerned in them, and who were at 
the same time actuated only by high and unselfish motives, 
moral earnestness, and devotion to duty. In this school 
Macaulay had received his early training, and he never forgot 
its principles. Important questions were now pressing 
forward in English politics. Hostility to the excesses of the 
French Revolution and the struggle against Napoleon had 
given a lease of life to British conservatism which was now 
nearly run out. Roman Catholics were still disqualified 
from holding office ; Parliament was unrepresentative and 



LIFE OF MACAULAY. XI 

under the control of the landowners — the aristocracy ; 
grain was kept dear in the interests of a class, by unjust 
taxation. But the agitation for reforms had already begun. 
And in literature and religion as well a liberalizing spirit 
was at work. Everywhere new ideas were in conflict with 
old forms — the nineteenth century against the eighteenth. 
Surrounded as he was by a society of brilliant contemporaries, 
and in the ferment of the new life which was working in the 
universities, Macaulay, with his well-stored mind and his 
exhaustless intellectual energy, found here opportunity for 
the free play and full expansion of his powers. Macaulay 
was eminently a sociable man. He loved to talk almost as 
well as he loved to read. He could talk all day and all 
night. No hour which found him a listener was ever too 
late ; and if his companion wished his share of the time, 
they both talked at once. It was not until many years later 
that he acquired the habit of intermittent " flashes of silence," 
which Sydney Smith noted as so delightful. His extraordi- 
nary fertility of mind and readiness of memory made him 
incomparable. He was never at a loss for an argument. 
Everything that he had ever read seemed at the end of his 
tongue; his mind could range in an instant through his vast 
storehouse of information, and bring to the front whatever 
bore on the question in hand. If he wished to illustrate the 
use of a word, he seemed to be able to quote offhand every 
passage containing that word which he had ever read, — it 
made no difference whether it was Latin, Greek, or English. 
It was no wonder that a man of such powers should have 
won for himself a foremost place as a conversationalist and 
an orator, as well as in literature. 

His career at the university was signalized by the aca- 
demic honors which he won. His scholarship, it is true, was 
not of the kind which loves to delve in details or range about 
abstractions. He disliked and neglected mathematics, and 



Xll UFE OF MACAULAY. 

he defined a scholar as one who reads Plato with his feet on 
the fender. But in 182 1 he proved the quality of his classi- 
cal attainments by carrying off a Craven scholarship, and 
twice he won the Chancellor's medal for English verse. 
Finally, in 1S24, he was elected, after the usual competitive 

ruination, one of the Fellows of his college. 

first distinguished literary success was in 1S25. and 
it was obtained by the publication of the on Milton, 

e ady he had begun to appear in print, having contributed 
a number of articles and some verse to a newly started and 
short-lived London quarterly. But the Edinburgh Review^ 
which printed the Essay on Milton, was the most important 
periodical in the country. The Essay was immediately 
recognized as the work of a new and brilliant writer, and 

; aulay became a regular contributor to the Review. At 
the same time he was pursuing the study of the law, though 
with little interest and no expectation of making it seric 
his profession. It is said that -he never really applied 
himself to any pursuit that was against the grain." and the 
law was not to his taste. But politics were ; and in 1830 
he entered the House of Commons as member for Calne, 

For the next seventh s literature held only a second 

place in his thoughts. His speeches on the Reform Bill in 

: placed him at once in the front rank of parliamentary 
orators, and contributed largely to the success erf the 
measure. Had he been free to follow the bent of his own 
inclinations, he might perhaps have risen to a position 
second to none of the great leaders of his part}-. But his 
poverty hampered him. His father's business, good when 
ntered the uni :.ad gone from bad to 

worse, until at last there was nothing of it left but debts, 
which Macaulay most honorably assumed and at last 
completely paid. His writing could be depended on for a 
small income, but it drew upon his tin. .ong as his 



1 



LIFE OF MACAULAY. xiii 

party was in power he was sure of office and a salary, but it 
fettered his independence. At this juncture an opportunity 
presented itself which enabled him, by banishing himself 
from England for a few years, to earn a sum sufficient to 
yield him a comfortable income for the rest of his life. He 
was appointed a member of the Supreme Council of India, 
and early in 1834 he left England to enter upon his new 
duties as one of the five English rulers of a great empire. 

The summer of 1838 saw him back in London. In his 
new-found leisure he began to plan his History of England. 
But his services were too valuable to his party to admit of 
his remaining in private life. Within a year he was elected 
to Parliament again as one of the members for Edinburgh, 
and soon after was taken into the Cabinet as Secretary of 
War. Macaulay was an ardent Whig, and always ready to 
do battle for his party. He was soon relieved from the cares 
of office, however, by the success of the Tories in 1841, and 
though he continued to sit as one of the representatives of 
Edinburgh, he was for the most part free to press forward 
the preparation of his greatest work. Five years later he 
again held office for a short time, but in the elections of 
1847 ne l° st nis seat m Parliament, and withdrew from public 
life. In 1852 he refused a place in the Cabinet ; and though, 
in the same year, yielding to the wishes of his former 
constituents at Edinburgh, who were anxious to make amends 
for his earlier defeat and were proud of so distinguished a 
representative, he again entered Parliament, he never after- 
wards took a prominent part in the country's business. All 
his strength was given to the History. 

In 1848 the first two volumes appeared. Its success was 
unprecedented. Macaulay had proposed to himself to write 
a work which should tk supersede the last fashionable novel 

on the tables of young ladies." The History proved to be 
the most popular book oi its generation, both in England 



XIV LIFE OF MACAULAY. 

and America. In his own country three thousand copies 
went in ten days, — a record surpassing anything since 
Waverley, nearly forty years before ; and four months later 
a New York publisher informed Macaulay that there were 
six editions on the market, with probably sixty thousand 
copies sold, adding, " No work, of any kind, has ever so 
completely taken our whole country by storm." The next 
two volumes, published in 1855, were still more popular. 
Within three months his publishers paid him ^20,000 in a 
single check. With pecuniary reward came also the honors 
that belonged to the first English historian of his day. In 
1849 ne ria< ^ declined the professorship of modern history at 
Cambridge. In 1853 he was elected a foreign member of 
the Institute of France, and the king of Prussia named him 
a knight of the Order of Merit. Learned societies all over 
Europe made him of their number ; he held high offices at 
the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge ; and in 1857 he 
was elevated to the peerage, as Baron Macaulay of Rothley, 
Not content with making himself the most popular and 
influential essayist and historian of his time, Lord Macaulay 
had aspired also to the poet's laurels. In 1842 he had 
published his well-known Lays of Ancient Rome, Full 
of fire and spirit, of rapid movement, vigor, and stateliness, 
they are as characteristic of their author as arc his speeches 
or his History. Macaulay was not a poet of the kind of the 
greatest poets of our century. His imagination was rather 
historic than poetic ; one of the tenderest-hearted of men, 
his feeling was social and sympathetic rather than lyric and 
impassioned ; his delight was in objective activity, not in the 
companionship of his own moods ; he loved the life of men 
better than the life of nature ; he was not an instinctive 
master of the secrets of the human heart. But he had the 
power of making the past seem present to him. He moved 
in other days or lands as easily as his own ; London became 



LIFE OF MACAU LAV. XV 

at will the London of Queen Anne or the capital of the 
Caesars. He could reconstruct, from the material which his 
great reading supplied, all the life and color and movement 
of generations dead and gone. The Lays of Ancie7it 
Rome are not mere rhetoric in verse ; they move us like 
martial music and the tread of marching men ; they are 
genuine poetry, though not of the kind which our age values 
most. 

Lord Macaulay's life had always been intense. " When I 
do sit down to work," he said of himself, " I work harder 
and faster than any person that I ever knew"; and he 
played as hard as he worked. His tremendous intellectual 
energy, always active, and always applying itself in power- 
fully concentrated effort, had begun to wear out his body. 
In 1852 had developed serious trouble with his heart, and 
he never regained perfect health. As the History progressed, 
he applied himself to his task with increasing difficulty ; after 
the publication of the second instalment his waning strength 
compelled him to resign his seat in Parliament ; the fifth 
volume he did not live to see in print. Toward the close 
of the year 1859 his weakness grew upon him, and on 
December 28th death came, suddenly but painlessly, as he 
sat in his easy chair with open book beside him. He was 
buried in Westminster Abbey, near to Johnson and Addi- 
son, — the great representative prose writer of the first half 
of the nineteenth century beside the two great essayist- 
the eighteenth. 

The most conspicuous trait in Macaulay's character, the 
trait which appears in all that he did, is his vigor, his energy 
of intellect. He is a kind of nineteenth-century Dr. John- 
son, made fit for the drawing-room. But where Johnson 
was lazy, he was active ; where Johnson was melancholy, he 
was cheerful ; where Johnson was weak, he was strong. 

His exhaustless capacity for work, his incessant intellectual 



XVI LIFE OF MACAULAY. 

activity, — he read with impartial avidity everything from the 
hardest Greek tragedy to the last bad novel, — his wonder- 
ful powers of memory, his brilliant conversation, his diversi- 
fied interests and varied literary production, all attest the 
same trait. He wasted on trifles the intellectual force of 
half a dozen ordinary brains. 

It is not strange that such a man should have been one 
of the most forcible writers that ever held a pen. Every 
sentence is crisp, clear, and strong. The boy or girl who 
studies Macaulay's style is taking a composition tonic. It 
is the best remedy that can be prescribed for the diffuseness 
and inaccuracy of thought, loose and ineffective sentence- 
structure, and feeble use of w r ords, that beset the average 
untrained writer. Clearness and force in thinking, speaking, 
and writing are the qualities best worth cultivating. hi The 
first rule of all writing," said Macaulay, "that rule to which 
every other is subordinate, is that the words used by the 
writer shall be such as most fully and precisely convey his 
meaning to the great body of his readers." It is a rule 
which w r e may well make our motto. The teacher who 
makes the best use of Macaulay will not fail to direct 
continual attention to the style. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

{EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1843.) 



/ Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who dares 
to publish a book renounces by that act the franchises 
appertaining to her sex, and can claim no exemption from 
the utmost rigor of critical procedure. From that opinion 
we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country which i 
boasts of many female writers, eminently qualified by their 
talents and acquirements to influence the public mind, it 
would be of most pernicious consequence that inaccurate 
history or unsound philosophy should be suffered to pass 
uncensured, merely because the offender chanced to be a ic 
lady. But we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic 
would do well to imitate the courteous knight who found 
himself compelled by duty to keep the lists against Brada- 
mante. He, we are told, defended successfully the cause 
of which he was the champion; but before the fight began, i ; 
exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he 
carefully blunted the point and edge. 
^ Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities 
which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her 
works, and especially the very pleasing k Memoirs of the 20 
Reign of James the First,' have fully entitled her to the 
privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those privi- 
leges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, either 
from the unlucky choice of a subject or from the indo- 
lence too often produced by success, they happen to fail, - 



2 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS Of ADDISON. 

shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it is 
sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors, 
but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that 
with which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, 
5 that it is high time to wake. 

"X Our readers will probably infer from what we have said 
that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The truth 
is, that she is not w r ell acquainted with her subject. No 
person who is not familiar with the political and literary 

io history of England during the reigns of William the Third, 
of Anne, and of George the First can possibly write a 
good life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to Miss 
Aikin, and many will think that we pay her a compliment, 
when we say that her studies have taken a different direc- 

15 tion. She is better acquainted with Shakespeare and 
Raleigh than with Congreve and Prior; and is far more 
at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's 
than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which 
surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at Hampton. She 

20 seems to have written about the Elizabethan age because 
she had read much about it; she seems, on the other hand, 
to have read a little about the age of Addison because 
she had determined to write about it. The consequence 
is, that she has had to describe men and things without 

25 having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and that 
she has often fallen into errors of a very serious kind. 
The reputation which Miss Aikin has justly earned stands 
so high, and the charm of Addison's letters is so great, 
that a second edition of this work may probably be 

30 required. If so, we hope that every paragraph will be 
revised, and that every date and fact about which there 
can be the smallest doubt will be carefully verified. 

y To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as 
much like affection as any sentiment can be which is 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 3 

inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and 
twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, 
that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry 
which w r e have often had occasion to reprehend in others, 
and which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the 5 
idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. 
All his powers cannot be equally developed; nor can we 
expect from him perfect self-knowledge. We need not, 
therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some 
compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, some 10 
heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as 
superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much 
better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of 
a writer that, in a high department of literature, in which 
many eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he 15 
has had no equal; and this may with strict justice be said 
oi_ Addison. 

^ As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration 
which he received from those who, bewitched by his 
fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of 20 
life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshiped 
him nightly in his favorite temple at Button's. But after 
full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been 
convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as 
can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. 25 
Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his char- 
acter; but the more carefully it is examined, the more will 
it appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound 
in the noble parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cow- 
ardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easil] 
be named in whom some particular good disposition has 
been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just 
harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stem 
and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of even 



4 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and 
dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried 
by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct 
we possess equally full information. 
/*5 His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, 
though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some 
figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages 
in the Biographia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up as 
a poor scholar from Westmoreland to Queen's College, 

10 Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth; made some 
progress in learning; became, like most of his fellow- 
students, a violent Royalist; lampooned the heads of the 
university, and was forced to ask pardon on his bended 
knees. When he had left college he earned a humble 

15 subsistence by reading the liturgy of the fallen Church to 
the families of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses 
were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. After the Resto- 
ration his loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain 
to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to 

20 France he lost his employment. But Tangier had been 
ceded by Portugal to England as part of the marriage 
portion of the Infanta Catharine; and to Tangier Lancelot 
Addison was sent. A more miserable situation can hardly 
be conceived. It was difficult to say whether the unfortu- 

25 nate settlers were more tormented by the heats or by the 
rains, by the soldiers within the wall or by the Moors 
without it. One advantage the chaplain had. He enjoyed 
an excellent opportunity of studying the history and man- 
ners of Jews and Mahometans; and of this opportunity he 

30 appears to have made excellent use. On his return to 
England, after some years of banishment, he published an 
interesting volume on the ' Polity and Religion of Barbary,' 
and another on the * Hebrew Customs and the State of 
Rabbinical Learning/ He rose to eminence in his profes- 



4 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 5 

sion, and became one of the royal chaplains, a Doctor of 
Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of Lichfield. 
It is said that he would have been made a bishop after 
the Revolution if he had not given offense to the govern- 
ment by strenuously opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, 5 
the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from 
Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's child- 
hood we know little. He learned his rudiments at 
schools in his father's neighborhood, and was then sent 10 
to the Charterhouse. The anecdotes which are popu- 
larly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize 
very well with what we know of his riper years. There 
remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a bar- 
ring out, and another tradition that he ran away from 15 
school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on ber- 
ries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search he 
was discovered and brought home. If these stories be 
true, it would be curious to know by what moral disci- 
pline so mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed 20 
into the gentlest and most modest of men. 
r v We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's pranks 
may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and 
successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the uni- 
versity, but carried thither a classical taste and a stock 25 
of learning which would have done honor to a faster of 
Arts. He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but 
he had not been many months there when some o( his 
Latin verses fell by accident into the hands o( Dr. Lan- 
caster, Dean of Magdalen College. 'Hie young scholar's 30 
diction and versification were already such as veteran 
professors might envy. \)v. Lancaster was desirous to 
serve a boy of such promise; nor was an opportunity 
long wanting. The Revolution had just taken place; 



6 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

and nowhere had it been hailed with more delight than 
at Magdalen College. That great and opulent corpora- 
tion had been treated by James and by his Chancellor 
with an insolence and injustice which, even in such a 
5 prince and in such a minister, may justly excite amaze- 
ment, and which had done more than even the prosecu- 
tion of the bishops to alienate the Church of England 
from the throne. A president, duly elected, had been 
violently expelled from his dwelling ; a Papist had been 

10 set over the society by a royal mandate; the fellows, 
who, in conformity with their oaths, had refused to sub- 
mit to this usurper, had been driven forth from their 
quiet cloisters and gardens to die of want or to live on 
charity. But the day of redress and retribution speedily 

15 came. The intruders were ejected ; the venerable 
house was again inhabited by its old inmates ; learning 
flourished under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; 
and with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit 
too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. In 

20 consequence of the troubles through which the society 
had passed, there had been no valid election of new 
members during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, 
there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; and 
thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young 

25 friend admittance to the advantages of a foundation then 
generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. 

\At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. He 
as at first one of those scholars who are called demies, 
but was subsequently elected a fellow. His college is 
30 still proud of his name ; his portrait still hangs in the 
hall; and strangers are still told that his favorite walk 
was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the 
banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly proba- 
ble, that he was distinguished among his fellow-students 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 7 

by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his 
manners, and by the assiduity with which he often pro- 
longed his studies far into the night. It is certain that 
his reputation for ability and learning stood high. Many 
years later the ancient doctors of Magdalen continued 5 
to talk in their common room of his boyish compositions, 
and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so 
remarkable had been preserved^Jt is proper, however, 
to remark that Miss Aikin has committed the error, 
very pardonable in a lady, of overrating Addison's clas- 10 
sical attainments. In one department of learning, in- 
deed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly possible to 
overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucre- 
tius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, 
was singularly exact and profound. He understood 15 
them thoroughly, entered into their spirit, and had the 
finest and most discriminating perception of all their 
peculiarities of style and melody; nay, he copied their 
manner with admirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all 
their British imitators who had preceded him, Buchanan 20 
and Milton alone excepted. This is high praise ; and 
beyond this we cannot with justice go. It is clear that 
Addison's serious attention during his residence at the 
university was almost entirely concentrated on Latin 
poetry, and that, if he did not wholly neglect other 25 
provinces of ancient literature, he vouchsafed to them 
only a cursory glance. He does not appear to have 
attained more than an ordinary acquaintance with the 
political and moral writers of Rome; nor was his own 
Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin verse 1 [is 
knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as was in 
his time thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently 
less than that which many lads now carry away ever) 
year from Eton and Rugby, A minute examination ol 



S THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

his works, if we had time to make such an examination, 
would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly 
advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is 
grounded. 
I [ Great praise is due to the notes which Addison ap- 
pended to his version of the second and third books of 
the 'Metamorphoses.' Yet those notes, while they show 
him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished 
scholar, show also how confined that domain was. They 

io are rich in apposite references to Virgil, Statius, and 
Claudian ; but they contain not a single illustration 
drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if in the whole com- 
pass of Latin literature there be a passage which stands 
in need of illustration drawn from the Greek poets, it 

15 is the story of Pentheus in the third book of the ' Meta- 
morphoses.' Ovid was indebted for that story to Eurip- 
ides and Theocritus, both of whom he has sometimes 
followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to 
Theocritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; 

20 and we therefore believe that we do not wrong him by 
supposing that he had little or no knowledge of their 
works. 

\ty/ His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical quo- 

1 tations, happily introduced ; but scarcely one of those 

25 quotations is in prose. He draws more illustrations 
from Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even 
his notions of the political and military affairs of the 
Romans seem to be derived from poets and poetasters. 
Spots made memorable by events which have changed 

30 the destinies of the world, and which have been worthily 
recorded by great historians, bring to his mind only 
scraps of some ancient versifier. In the gorge of the 
Apennines he naturally remembers the hardships which 
Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the 



\« 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 9 

authentic narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque nar- 
rative of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius 
Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks 
of Plutarch's lively description, or of the stern concise- 
ness of the Commentaries, or of those letters to Atticus 5 
which so forcibly express the alternations of hope and 
fear in a sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only 
authority for the events of the Civil War is Lucan. 

All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Flor- 
ence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without 10 
recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or 
of the Attic dramatists; but they brought to his recol- 
lection innumerable passages of Horace, Juvenal, Statius, 
and Ovid. 

\\, The same may be said of the ' Treatise on Medals.' 15 
Pn that pleasing work we find about three hundred pas- 
sages extracted with great judgment from the Roman 
poets ; but we do not recollect a single passage taken 
from any Roman orator or historian, and we are confi- 
dent that not a line is quoted from any Greek writer. 20 
No person who had derived all his information on the 
subject of medals from Addison would suspect that the 
Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and in 
beauty of execution far superior, to those of Rome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof that 25 
Addison's classical knowledge was confined within nar- 
row limits, that proof would be furnished by his ' Essay 
on the Evidences of Christianity.' The Roman poets 
throw little or no light on the literary and historical 
questions which he is under the necessity of examining 3 
in that essay. He is, therefore, left completely in the 
dark ; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he 
gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns 
as grounds for his religious belief stories as absurd as 



10 THE LIEE AXD WRITINGS OE ADDISOX. 

that of the Cock Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as 
Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thun- 
dering Legion ; is convinced that Tiberius moved the 
Senate to admit Jesus among the gods: and pronounces 
5 the letter of Abgarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of 
great authority. Xor were these errors the effects of 
superstition ; for to superstition Addison was by no 
means prone. The truth is, that he was writing about 
what he did not understand. 
\ lo Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it ap- 
\ pears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was one 
of several writers whom the booksellers en^a^ed to make 
an English version of Herodotus ; and she infers that he 
must have been a good Greek scholar. We can allow 

15 very little weight to this argument when we consider 
that his fellow-laborers were to have been Boyle and 
Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as the nominal 
author of the worst book on Greek history and philology 
that ever was printed ; and this book, bad as it is, Boyle 

20 was unable to produce without help. Of Blackmore's 
attainments in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient 
to say that, in his prose, he has confounded an aphorism 
with an apothegm, and that when, in his verse, he treats 
of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his readers with 

25 four false quantities to a page. 

\\ It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addi- 
son were of as much service to him as if they had been 
more extensive. The world generally gives its admira- 
tion, not to the man who does what nobody else even 

30 attempts to do, but to the man who does best what mul- 
titudes do well." Bentley was so immeasurably superior 
to all the other scholars of his time that few among them 
could discover his superiority. But the accomplishment 
in which Addison excelled his contemporaries was then, 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 11 

as it is now, highly valued and assiduously cultivated at 
all English seats of learning. Everybody who had been 
at a public school had written Latin verses ; many had 
written such verses with tolerable success, and were quite 
able to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the 5 
skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on 
the ' Barometer ' and the ' Bowling Green ' were ap- 
plauded by hundreds to whom the 'Dissertation on the 
Epistles of Phalaris ' was as unintelligible as the hiero- 
O glyphics on an obelisk. 10 

Purity of style and an easy flow of numbers are com- 
mon to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favorite piece 
is the ' Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies,' for in that 
piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humor which 
many years later enlivened thousands of breakfast-tables. 15 
Swift boasted that he was never known to steal a hint ; 
and he certainly owed as little to his predecessors as any 
modern writer. Yet we cannot help suspecting that he 
borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the happiest 
touches in his voyage to Lilliput from Addison's verses. 20 
/-.Let our readers judge. 
\ "The Emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by about the 
breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is 
enough to strike an awe into the beholders." 
<v U About thirty years before 'Gulliver's Travels' ap- 25 
peared, Addison wrote these lines : — 

" Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infer! 
Pygmeadum ductor, qui, ma j estate verendus, 
Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in alnam." 

<h\ The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly 
admired both at Oxford and Cambridge before his name 

had ever been heard by the wits who thronged the coffee- 



12 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

houses round Drury Lane Theatre. In his twenty-second 
year he ventured to appear before the public as a writer 
of English verse. He addressed some complimentary 
lines to Dryden, who, after many triumphs and many 
5 reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely emi- 
nence among the literary men. of that age. Dryden ap- 
pears to have been much gratified by the young scholar's 
praise ; and an interchange of civilities and good offices 
followed. Addison was probably introduced by Dryden 

io to Congreve, and was certainly presented by Congreve 

to Charles Montagu, who was then Chancellor of the 

Exchequer and leader of the Whig party in the House 

of Commons. 

'<- At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote him- 

15 self to poetry. He published a translation of part of the 
fourth Georgic, ' Lines to King William,' and other per- 
formances of equal value; that is to say, of no value at 
all. But in those days the public was in the habit of 
receiving with applause pieces which would now have 

20 little chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize or the 
Seatonian prize. And the reason is obvious. The heroic 
couplet was then the favorite measure. The art of 
arranging words in that measure, so that the lines may 
flow smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, that 

25 the rimes may strike the ear strongly, and that there 
may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an art as 
mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, 
and may be learned by any human being who has sense 
enough to learn anything. But, like other mechanical arts, 

3° it was gradually improved by means of many experiments 
and many failures. It was reserved for Pope to dis- 
cover the trick, to make himself complete master of it, 
and to teach it to everybody else. From the time when 
his * Pastorals ' appeared, heroic versification became 



p 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 01 ADDISON. 13 

matter of rule and compass ; and before long all artists 
were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blun- 
dered on one happy thought or expression were able to 
write reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was 
concerned, could not be distinguished from those of Pope 5 
himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of 
Charles the Second — Rochester, for example, or Mar- 
vel, or Oldham — would have contemplated with admiring 
despair. 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small man. 10 
But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how to manu- 
facture decasyllable verses, and poured them forth by 
thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as 
smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have 
passed through Mr. Brunei's mill in the dockyards at 15 
Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks 
rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand with a blunt 
hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation of a cele- 
brated passage in the ^Eneid : — 

" This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite 20 

Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 

And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 25 

On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears. " 

Compare with these jagged, misshapen distichs the 
neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlimited 1 
abundance. We take the first lines on which we open in 
his version of Tasso. They are neither better nor worse 
than the rest: — 



14 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can boast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
5 If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 

The current pass, and seek the further shore." 

Ever since the time of Pope there has been a glut 
of lines of this sort : and we are now as little disposed to 
admire a man for being able to write them as for being 

io able to write his name. But in the days of William the 
Third such versification was rare ; and a rimer who had 
any skill in it passed for a great poet, just as in the 
dark ages a person who could write his name passed for 
a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke. Stepney, Granville, 

15 Walsh, and others, whose only title to fame was that 
they said in tolerable meter what might have been as 
well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, 
were honored with marks of distinction which ought to 
be reserved for genius. With these Addison must have 

20 ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by per- 

f formances which very little resembled his juvenile poems. 

(\ v^ Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained from 

Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In return 

for this service, and for other services of the same kind, 

the veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation of 

the .Eneid, complimented his young friend with great 

liberality, and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. 

He affected to be afraid that his own performance would 

not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth 

Georgic by "the most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." 

"After his bees," added Dryden. "my latter swarm is 

.scarcely worth the hiving.*' 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary for 
Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed to 



1 



the LIFE And writings of Addison. 15 

point his course towards the clerical profession. His 
habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college 
had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and boasts 
that it has given at least one bishop to almost every see 
in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honorable 5 
place in the Church, and had set his heart on seeing his 
son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions in 
the young man's rimes, that his intention was to take 
orders. But Charles Montagu interfered. Montagu had 
first brought himself into notice by verses, well-timed 10 
and not contemptibly written, but never, we think, 
rising above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and 
for his country, he early quitted poetry, in which he 
could never have attained a rank as high as that of 
Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind to official and 15 
parliamentary business. It is written that the ingenious 
person who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince of 
Abyssinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, 
waved his wings, sprang into the air, and instantly 
dropped into the lake. But it is added that the wings 20 
which were unable to support him through the sky, bore 
him up effectually as soon as he was in the water. This 
is no bad type of the fate of Charles Montagu, and of 
men like him. When he attempted to soar into the 
regions of poetical invention, he altogether failed; but 25 
as soon as he had descended from that ethereal elevation 
into a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly 
raised him above the mass. He became a distinguished 
financier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still 
retained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days ; ;>o 
but he showed that fondness, not by wearying the public 
with his own feeble performances, but by discovering 
and encouraging literary excellence in others. A crowd 
of wits and poets, who would easily have vanquished 



V 



16 THE liFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

him as a competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. 
In his plans for the encouragement of learning, he was 
cordially supported by the ablest and most virtuous of 
his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. Though 

.5 both these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, 
it was not solely from a love of letters that they were 
desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual qualifica- 
tions in the public service. The Revolution had altered 
the whole system of government. Before that event the 

ao press had been controlled by censors, and the parliament 
had sat only two months in eight years. Now the press 
was free, and had begun to exercise unprecedented influ- 
ence on the public mind. Parliament met annually and 
sat long. The chief power in the State had passed to the 

15 House of Commons. At such a conjuncture, it was natu- 
ral that literary and oratorical talents should rise in value. 
There was danger that a goyernment which neglected 
such talents might be subverted by them. It was, there- 
fore, a profound and enlightened policy which led Montagu 

20 and Somers to attach such talents to the Whig party, by 
the strongest ties both of interest and of gratitude. 

*/ It is remarkable that in a neighboring country we 
have recently seen similar effects follow from similar 
causes. The Revolution of July, 1830, established repre- 

25 sentative government in France. The men of letters 
instantly rose to the highest importance in the State. 
At the present moment, most of the persons whom we 
see at the head both of the Administration and of the 
Opposition have been professors, historians, journalists, 

30 poets. The influence of the literary class in England 
during the generation which followed the Revolution 
was great, but by no means so great as it has lately been 
in France ; for in England the aristocracy of intellect 
had to contend with a powerful and deeply rooted aris- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 17 

tocracy of a very different kind. France had no Somer- 
sets and Shrewsburies to keep down her Addisons and 
Priors. 

It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just com- 
pleted his twenty-seventh year, that the course of his life 5 
was finally determined. Both the great chiefs of the 
Ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In political 
opinions he already was what he continued to be through 
life, a firm, though a moderate, Whig. He had addressed 
the most polished and vigorous of his early English lines ro 
to Somers, and had dedicated to Montagu a Latin poem, 
truly Virgilian both in style and rhythm, on the peace of 
Ryswick. The wish of the young poet's great friends 
was, it should seem, to employ him in the service of the 
Crown abroad. But an intimate knowledge of the French 15 
language was a qualification indispensable to a diploma- 
tist; and this qualification Addison had not acquired. It 
was, therefore, thought desirable that he should pass 
some time on the Continent in preparing himself for 
official employment. His own means were not such as 20 
would enable him to travel; but a pension of three hun- 
dred pounds a year was procured for him by the interest 
of the Lord Chancellor. It seems to have been appre- 
hended that some difficulty might be started by the rulers 
of Magdalen College. But the Chancellor of the K\ 
chequer wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The 
State — such was the purport of Montagu's letter— could 
not, at that time, spare to the Church such a man as 
Addison. Too many high civil posts were already occu- 
pied by adventurers, who, destitute of every liberal art 3° 
and sentiment, at once pillaged and disgraced the coun- 
try which they pretended to serve. It had become 
necessary to recruit for the public service from a very 
different class, — from that class of which Addison was the 



IS THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

representative. The close of the Minister's letter was 
remarkable. " I am called/' he said, " an enemy of the 
Church. But I will never do it any other injury than 
keeping Mr. Addison out of it." 
O5) This interference was successful; and in the summer 
of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and 
still retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Oxford, 
and set out on his travels. He crossed from Dover to 
Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received there with 

10 great kindness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend 
Montagu, Charles, Earl of Manchester, who had just 
been appointed Ambassador to the Court of France. 
The Countess, a Whig and a toast, was probably as gra- 
cious as her lord ; for Addison long retained an agree- 

15 able recollection of the impression which she at this 
time made on him, and, in some lively lines written on 
the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, described the envy 
which her cheeks, glowing with the genuine bloom of 
England, had excited among the painted beauties of 

20 Versailles. 

\ Louis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating the 
^> vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root in 
reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The servile litera- 
ture of France had changed its character to suit the 

25 changed character of the prince. No book appeared 
that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, who was just 
dead, had passed the close of his life in writing sacred 
dramas ; and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian 
mysteries in Plato. Addison described this state of 

30 things in a short but lively and graceful letter to Mon- 
tagu* Another letter, written about the same time to 
the Lord Chancellor, conveyed the strongest assurances 
of gratitude and attachment. " The only return I can 
make to your lordship," said Addison, "will be to apply 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 19 

myself entirely to my business." With this view he 
quitted Paris and repaired to Blois, a place where it was 
supposed that the French language was spoken in its 
highest purity, and where not a single Englishman 
could be found. Here he passed some months pleasantly 5 
and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of his 
associates, an abbe named Philippeaux, gave an account 
to Joseph Spence. If this account is to be trusted, 
Addison studied much, mused much, talked little, had 
fits of absence, and either had no love affairs or was too 10 
discreet to confide them to the abbe. A man who, even 
when surrounded by fellow-countrymen and fellow-stu- 
dents, had always been remarkably shy and silent, was 
not likely to be loquacious in a foreign tongue and 
among foreign companions. But it is clear from Addi- 15 
son's letters, some of which were long after published 
in the Guardian, that, while he appeared to be absorbed 
in his own meditations, he was really observing French 
society with that keen and sly, yet not ill-natured, side- 
glance which was peculiarly his own. 20 
>Q- From Blois he returned to Paris; and having now 
mastered the French language, found great pleasure in 
the society of French philosophers and poets. He gave 
an account in a letter to Bishop Hough of two highly 
interesting conversations, one with Malebranche, the other 25 
with Boileau. Malebranche expressed great partiality for 
the English, and extolled the genius of Newton, but shook 
his head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was indeed 
so unjust as to call the author of the 'Leviathan' a poor 
silly creature. Addison's modesty restrained him from > 
fully relating, in his letter, the circumstances of his intro- 
duction to Boileau. Boileau, having survived the friends 
and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived 
in retirement, seldom went either to Court or to the 



20 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

Academy, and was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of 
the English and of English literature he knew nothing. 
He had hardly heard the name of Dryden. Some of our 
countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have as- 
5 serted that this ignorance must have been affected. We 
own that we see no ground for such a supposition. Eng- 
lish literature was to the French of the age of Louis the 
Fourteenth what German literature was to our own grand- 
fathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men 

10 who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester 
Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, 
had the slightest notion that Wieland was one of the first 
wits and poets, and Lessing beyond all dispute the first 
critic, in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the 

15 'Paradise Lost' and about 'Absalom and Achitophel'; 
but he had read Addison's Latin poems, and admired them 
greatly. They had given him, he said, quite a new notion 
of the state of learning and taste among the English. 
Johnson will have it that these praises were insincere. 

20 "Nothing," says he, " is better known of Boileau than that 
he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern 
Latin; and therefore his profession of regard was probably 
the effect of his civility rather than approbation." Now, 
nothing is better known of Boileau than that he was 

25 singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember 
that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow 
praise on any composition which he did not approve. On 
literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident 
spirit rebelled against that authority to which everything 

3° else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell 
Louis the Fourteenth firmly, and even rudely, that his 
Majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses 
which were detestable. What was there in Addison's 
position that could induce the satirist, whose stern and 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDIS OAT. 21 

fastidious temper had been the dread of two generations, 
to turn sycophant for the first and last time ? Nor was 
Boileau's contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or 
peevish. He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first 
order would ever be written in a dead language. And 5 
did he think amiss? Has not the experience of centuries 
confirmed his opinion ? Boileau also thought it probable 
that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan 
age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And 
who can think otherwise ? What modern scholar can 10 
honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the 
style of Livy ? Yet is it not certain that, in the style of 
Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks 
of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of the Po ? 
Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than 15 
Frederic the Great understood French ? Yet is it not 
notorious that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, 
writing French, and nothing but French, during more 
than half a century, after unlearning his mother tongue 
in order to learn French, after living familiarly during 20 
many years with French associates, could not, to the last, 
compose in French without imminent risk of committing 
some mistake which would have moved a smile in the 
literary circles of Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus 
and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson 25 
and Sir Walter Scott wrote English ? And are there not 
in the * Dissertation on India/ the last of \)v. Robert- 
son's works, in ' Waverley,' in ' Marmion,' Scotticisms at 
which a London apprentice would laugh ? But does it 
follow, because we think thus, that we can find nothing 
to admire in the noble alcaics of (nay, or in the playful 
elegiacs of Vincent Bourne ? Surely not. Nor was 
Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of 
appreciating good modern Latin. In the very letter to 



11 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS Of ADDISON. 

which Johnson alludes, Boileau says: "Ne croyez pas 
pourtant que je veuille par la blamer les vers Latins que 
vous m'avez envoyes d'un de vos illustres academiciens. 
Je les ai trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de 
5 Sannazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile." Several 
poems in modern Latin have been praised by Boileau 
quite as liberally as it was his habit to praise anything. 
He says, for example, of the Pere Fraguier*s epigrams, that 
Catullus seems to have come to life again. But the best 

10 proof that Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt 
for modern Latin verses which has been imputed to him 
is that he wrote and published Latin verses in several 
meters. Indeed, it happens, curiously enough, that the 
most severe censure ever pronounced by him on modern 

15 Latin is conveyed in Latin hexameters. We allude to the 
fragment which begins : — ' 

" Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 
Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 
Musa. jubes ? " 

/Y &> For these reasons we feel assured that the praise which 
Boileau bestowed on the k Machinae Gesticulantes ' and 
the ' Gerano-Pygmaeomachia ' was sincere. He certainly 
opened himself to Addison with a freedom which was a sure 
indication of esteem. Literature was the chief subject of 
25 conversation. The old man talked on his favorite theme 
much and well. — indeed, as his young hearer thought, 
incomparably well. Boileau had undoubtedly some of the 
qualities of a great critic. He wanted imagination; but 
he had strong sense. His literary code was formed on 
30 narrow principles : but in applying it he showed great 
judgment and penetration. In mere style, abstracted 
from the ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was 
excellent. He was well acquainted with the great Greek 



V 



THE LIFE A XI) WRITINGS OF ADD IS OX. 23 

writers, and, though unable fully to appreciate their crea- 
tive genius, admired the majestic simplicity of their man- 
ner, and had learned from them to despise bombast and 
tinsel. It is easy, we think, to discover in the Spectator 
and the Guardian traces of the influence, in part salutary 5 
and in part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on 
^»the mind of Addison. 
( jL v While Addison was at Paris, an event took place which 
/ made that capital a disagreeable residence for an English- 
man and a Whig. Charles, second of the name, King of 10 
Spain, died, and bequeathed his dominions to Philip, Duke 
of Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. The King of 
France, in direct violation of his engagements, both with 
Great Britain and with the States-General, accepted the 
bequest on behalf of his grandson. The House of Bourbon 15 
was at the summit of human grandeur. England had been 
outwitted, and found herself in a situation at once degrad- 
ing and perilous. The people of France, not presaging 
the calamities by which they were destined to expiate the 
perfidy of their sovereign, went mad with pride and delight. 20 
Every man looked as if a great estate had just been left 
him. "The French conversation," said Addison, "begins 
to grow insupportable; that which was before the vainest 
nation in the world is now worse than ever." Sick of the 
arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and probably fore- -5 
seeing that the peace between France and England could 
not be of long duration, he set off for Italy. 
*l j In December, 1700, 1 he embarked at Marseilles. As he 

1 It is strange that Addison should, in the first lines of his trawls. 
have misdated his departure from Marseilles by a whole year, and 
still more strange that this slip of the pen, which throws the whole 
narrative into inextricable confusion, should have been repeated in 

a succession of editions, and never detected by TieUrll or lluul. — 
flfacctulay. 



24 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by the 
sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained their 
verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he 
encountered one of the black storms of the Mediterra- 
5 nean. The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and 
confessed himself to a capuchin who happened to be on 
board. The English heretic, in the meantime, fortified 
himself against the terrors of death with devotions of 
a very different kind. How strong an impression this 

io perilous voyage made on him appears from the ode, 
' How are thy servants blest, O Lord ! ' which was long 
after published in the Spectator. After some days of 
discomfort and danger, Addison was glad to land at 
Savona, and to make his way, over mountains where no 

15 road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of Genoa. 

(1 (r\ At Genoa, still ruled by her own Doge, and by the 

nobles whose names were inscribed on her Book of Gold, 

Addison made a short stay. He admired the narrow 

streets overhung by long lines of towering palaces, the 

20 walls rich with frescos, the gorgeous temple of the 
Annunciation, and the tapestries whereon were recorded 
the long glories of the House of Doria. Thence he 
hastened to Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic 
magnificence of the cathedral with more wonder than 

25 pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while a gale was 
blowing, and saw the waves raging as they raged when 
Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then the gayest 
spot in Europe, the traveler spent the Carnival, the gayest 
season of the year, in the midst of masks, dances, and 

30 serenades. Here he was at once diverted and provoked 
by the absurd dramatic pieces which then disgraced the 
Italian stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was 
indebted for a valuable hint. He was present when a 
ridiculous play on the death of Cato was performed. 



THE LIFE A AW WRITINGS OF ADDISOX. 25 

Cato, it seems, was in love with a daughter of Scipio. 
The lady had given her heart to Caesar. The rejected 
lover determined to destroy himself. He appeared seated 
in his library, a dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso 
before him; and in this position he pronounced a soliloquy 5 
before he struck the blow. We are surprised that so re- 
markable a circumstance as this should have escaped the 
notice of all Addison's biographers. There cannot, we 
conceive, be the smallest doubt that this scene, in spite 
of its absurdities and anachronisms, struck the traveler's 10 
imagination, and suggested to him the thought of bringing 
Cato on the English stage. It is well known that about 
this time he began his tragedy, and that he finished the 
first four acts before he returned to England. 

^ J On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn some 15 
miles out of the beaten road by a wish to see the smallest 
independent state in Europe. On a rock where the snow 
still lay, though the Italian spring was now far advanced, 
was perched the little fortress of San Marino. The roads 
which led to the secluded town were. so bad that few 20 
travelers had ever visited it, and none had ever pub- 
lished an account of it. Addison could not suppress a 
good-natured smile at the simple manners and institu- 
tions of this singular community. But he observed, 
with the exultation of a Whig, that the rude mountain 25 
tract which formed the territory of the republic swarmed 
with an honest, healthy, and contented peasantry, while 
the rich plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil 
and spiritual tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the 
uncleared wilds of America. 

J \L-* At Rome Addison remained on his first visit only long 
enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and o\ the 
Pantheon. His haste is the more extraordinary because 
the Holy Week was close at hand. He has given no 



26 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

hint which can enable us to pronounce why he chose to 
fly from a spectacle which every year allures from distant 
regions persons of far less taste and sensibility than his. 
Possibly, traveling as he did at the charge of a govern- 
5 ment distinguished by its enmity to the Church of Rome, 
he may have thought that it would be imprudent in him 
to assist at the most magnificent rite of that Church. 
Many eyes would be upon him, and he might find it diffi- 
cult to behave in such a manner as to give offense neither 

io to his patrons in England nor to those among whom he 
resided. Whatever his motives may have been, he turned 
his back on the most august and affecting ceremony which 
is known among men, and posted along the Appian Way 
to Naples. 
O C^j Naples was then destitute of what are now, perhaps, 
' its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the awful 
mountain were indeed there. But a farmhouse stood on 
the theater of Herculaneum, and rows of vines grew over 
the streets of Pompeii. The temples of Paestum had not 

20 indeed been hidden from the eye of man by any great 
convulsion of nature ; but, strange to say, their existence 
was a secret even to artists and antiquaries. Though 
situated within a few hours' journey of a great capital, 
where Salvator had not long before painted, and where 

25 Vico was then lecturing, those noble remains were as 
little known to Europe as the ruined cities overgrown by 
the forests of Yucatan. What was to be seen at Naples 
Addison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tunnel 
of Posilipo, and wandered among the vines and almond 

30 trees of Capreoe. But neither the wonders of nature nor 
those of art could so occupy his attention as to prevent 
him from noticing, though cursorily, the abuses of the 
government and the misery of the people. The great 
kingdom which had just descended to Philip the Fifth 



L/0 



H 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADD J SOX. 27 

was in a state of paralytic dotage. Even Castile and 
Aragon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, compared with 
the Italian dependencies of the Spanish crown, Castile 
and Aragon might be called prosperous. It is clear that 
all the observations which Addison made in Italy tended 5 
to confirm him in the political opinions which he had 
adopted at home. To the last, he always spoke of foreign 
travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Free- 
holder^ the Tory foxhunter asks what traveling is good 
for except to teach a man to jabber French and to talk 10 
against passive obedience. 

From Naples Addison returned to Rome by sea, along 
the coast which his favorite Virgil had celebrated. The 
felucca passed the headland where the oar and trumpet 
were placed by the Trojan adventurers on the tomb of 15 
Misenus, and anchored at night under the shelter of the 
fabled promontory of Circe. The voyage ended in the 
Tiber, still overhung with dark verdure, and still turbid 
with yellow sand, as when it met the eyes of ^Eneas. 
From the ruined port of Ostia the stranger hurried to 20 
Rome ; and at Rome he remained during those hot and 
sickly months when, even in the Augustan age, all who 
could make their escape fled from mad dogs and from 
streets black with funerals, to gather the first figs of the 
season in the country. It is probable that when he, long \> 
after, poured forth in verse his gratitude to the Provi- 
dence which had enabled him to breathe unhurt in tainted 
air, he was thinking of the August and September which 
he passed at Rome. 

It was not till the latter end of October that he tore 30 
himself away from the masterpieces of ancient and 
modern art which are collected in the city so long the 
mistress of the world. He then journeyed northward, 
passed through Sienna, and for a moment forgot his 



2S THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISOX. 

prejudices in favor of classic architecture as he looked 
on the magnificent cathedral. At Florence he spent 
some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed 
with the pleasures of ambition and impatient of its pains, 
5 fearing both parties and loving neither, had determined 
to hide in an Italian retreat talents and accomplishments 
which, if they had been united with fixed principles and 
civil courage, might have made him the foremost man of 
his age. These days, we are told, passed pleasantly; and 

10 we can easily believe\ it. For Addison was a delightful 

companion when he was at his ease ; and the Duke, 

though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had the 

invaluable art of putting at ease all who came near him. 

]f V- Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially to 

15 the sculptures in the Museum, which he preferred even 
to those of the Vatican. He then pursued his journey 
through a country in which the ravages of the last war 
were still discernible, and in which all men were looking 
forward with dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene 

20 had already descended from the Rhaetian Alps to dis- 
pute with Catinat the rich plain of Lombardy. The faith- 
less ruler of Savoy was still reckoned among the allies 
of Louis. England had not yet actually declared war 
against France; but Manchester had left Paris, and the 

25 negotiations which produced the Grand Alliance against 
the House of Bourbon were in progress. Under such 
circumstances, it was desirable for an English traveler to 
reach neutral ground without delay. Addison resolved 
to cross Mont Cenis. It was December, and the road 

30 was very different from that which now reminds the 
stranger of the power and genius of Napoleon. The win- 
ter, however, was mild ; and the passage was, for those 
times, easy. To this journey Addison alluded when, in 
the ode which we have already quoted, he said that for 



H 



¥9 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 2 l ) 

him the Divine goodness had warmed the hoary Alpine 
hills. 

J) It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he com- 
posed his Epistle to his friend Montagu, now Lord 
Halifax. That Epistle, once widely renowned, is now 5 
known only to curious readers, and will hardly be consid- 
ered by those to whom it is known as in any perceptible 
degree heightening Addison's fame. It is, however, 
decidedly superior to any English composition which he 
had previously published. Nay, we think it quite as 10 
good as any poem in heroic meter which appeared during 
the interval between the death of Dryden and the pub- 
lication of the l Essay on Criticism.' It contains passages 
as good as the second-rate passages of Pope, and would 
have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior. 15 

But whatever be the literary merits or defects of the 
Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the principles and 
spirit of the author. Halifax had now nothing to give. 
He had fallen from power, had been held up to obloquy, 
had been impeached by the House of Commons, and, 20 
though his peers had dismissed the impeachment, had, 
as it seemed, little chance of ever again filling high 
office. The Epistle, written at such a time, is one among 
many proofs that there was no mixture of cowardice or 
meanness in the suavity and moderation which distin- -5 
guished Addison from all the other public men of those 
stormy times. 

At Geneva the traveler learned that a partial change 
of ministry had taken place in England, and that the 
Earl of Manchester had become Secretary of State. 30 
Manchester exerted himself to serve his young friend. 
It was thought advisable that an English agent should 
be near the person of Eugene in Italy; and Addison, 

whose diplomatic education was now finished, was thr 



ft. 



30 THE LITE A XI) WRITINGS OF ADDISON, 

man selected. He was preparing to enter on his honor- 
able functions, when all his prospects were for a time 
darkened by the death of William the Third. 
h,(f) Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, politi- 
5 cal, and religious, to the Whig party. That aversion 
appeared in the first measures of her reign. Manchester 
was deprived of the seals, after he had held them only a 
few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax was sworn of 
the Privy Council. Addison shared the fate of his three 

io patrons. His hopes of employment in the public service 
were at an end ; his pension was stopped, and it was 
necessary for him to support himself by his own exer- 
tions. He became tutor to a young English traveler, 
and appears to have rambled with his pupil over a great 

15 part of Switzerland and Germany. At this time he 
wrote his pleasing treatise on 'Medals.' It was not 
published till after his death ; but several distinguished 
scholars saw the manuscript, and gave just praise to the 
grace of the style, and to the learning and ingenuity 

20 evinced by the quotations. 

CJl From Germany Addison repaired to Holland, where 
he learned the melancholy news of his father's death. 
After passing some months in the United Provinces, he 
returned, about the close of the year 1703, to England. 

25 He was there cordially received by his friends, and intro- 
duced by them into the Kit-Cat Club, a society in which 
were collected all the various talents and accomplish- 
ments which then gave luster to the Whig party. \ 

Addison was, during some months after his return 
.0 from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficul- 
ties. But it was soon in the power of his noble patrons 
to serve him effectually. A political change, silent and 
gradual, but of the highest importance, was in daily 
progress, The accession of Anne had been hailed by 



I 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 31 

the Tories with transports of joy and hope ; and for a 
time it seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise 
again. The throne was surrounded by men supposed to 
be attached to the prerogative and to the Church ; and 
among these none stood so high in the favor of the 5 
sovereign as the Lord Treasurer Godolphin and the 
Captain-General Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen had 
ully expected that the policy of these ministers would 
be directly opposed to that which had been almost con- 10 
stantly followed by William; that the landed interest 
would be favored at the expense of trade ; that no addi- 
tion would be made to the funded debt ; that the privileges 
conceded to Dissenters by the late king would be curtailed, 
if not withdrawn; that the war with France, if there must 1 5 
be such a war, would, on our part, be almost entirely naval ; 
and that the government would avoid close connections 
with foreign powers, and, above all, with Holland. 
But the country gentlemen and country clergymen 
were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The -o 
prejudices and passions which raged without control in 
vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor-houses 
of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the chiefs of 
the ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both for 
the public interest and for their own interest to adopt 25 
a Whig policy, at least as respected the alliances of the 
country and the conduct of the war. But if the foreign 
policy of the Whigs were adopted, it was impossible to 
abstain from adopting also their financial policy. The 
natural consequences followed. The rigid Tories wer< 
alienated from the government. The votes of the Whigs 
became necessary to it. The votes of the Whigs could 
be secured only by further concessions; and further eon 
cessions the Queen was induced to make. 



32 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

^ I .At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties 
bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 1826. In 
1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory ministry divided into 
two hostile sections. The position of Mr. Canning and 
5 his friends in 1826 corresponded to that which Marl- 
borough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Nottingham 
and Jersey were in 1704 what Lord Eldon and Lord 
Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 were 
in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs of 

10 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, 
Cowper, were not in office. There was no avowed coali- 
tion between them and the moderate Tories. It is prob- 
able that no direct communication tending to such a 
coalition had yet taken place ; yet all men saw that such 

15 a coalition was inevitable, — nay, that it was already half 
formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of things 
when tidings arrived of the great battle fought at Blen- 
heim on the 13th August, 1704. By the Whigs the 
news was hailed with transports of joy and pride. No 

20 fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them 
against the commander whose genius had, in one day, 
changed the face of Europe, saved the Imperial throne, 
humbled the House of Bourbon, and secured the Act of 
Settlement against foreign hostility. The feeling of the 

25 Tories was very different. They could not, indeed, with- 
out imprudence, openly express regret at an event so 
glorious to their country ; but their congratulations were 
so cold and sullen as to give deep disgust to the victori- 
ous general and his friends. 
>3Q-» Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time he 
J could spare from business he was in the habit of spend- 
ing at Newmarket or at the card table. But he was not 
absolutely indifferent to poetry ; and he was too intelli- 
gent an observer not to perceive that literature was a 



THE LIFE AND WE J 77 ACS 07" ADDISON. 33 

formidable engine of political warfare, and that the great 
Whig leaders had strengthened their party and raised 
their character by extending a liberal and judicious 
patronage to good writers. He was mortified, and not 
without reason, by the exceeding badness of the poems 5 
which appeared in honor of the battle of Blenheim. 
One of those poems has been rescued from oblivion by 
the exquisite absurdity of three lines : — 

" Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
And each man mounted on his capering beast; 10 

Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 

^ Where to procure better verses the Treasurer did not 
know. He understood how to negotiate a loan or remit 
a subsidy ; he was also well versed in the history of run- 
ning horses and fighting cocks; but his acquaintance 15 
among the poets was very small. He consulted Halifax; 
but Halifax affected to decline the office of adviser. He 
had, he said, done his best, when he had power, to en- 
courage men whose abilities and acquirements might do 
honor to their country. Those times were over. Other 20 
maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in 
obscurity; and the public money was squandered on the 
undeserving. "I do know," he added, " a gentleman 
who would celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of 
the subject. But I will not name him." Godolphin, 25 
who was expert at the soft answer which turneth away 
wrath, and who was under the necessity of paying court 
to the Whigs, gently replied that there was too much 
ground for Halifax's complaints, but that what was amiss 
should in time be rectified, and that in the meantime thi 
services of a man such as Halifax had described should 
be liberally rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison; 
but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary 



34 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

interest of his friend, insisted that the minister should 
apply in the most courteous manner to Addison himself ; 
and this Godolphin promised to do. 
J (l Addison then occupied a garret up three pairs of stairs, 
5 over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this humble 
lodging he was surprised, on the morning which followed 
the conversation between Godolphin and Halifax, by a 
visit from no less a person than the Right Honorable 
Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 

io afterwards Lord Carleton. This high-born minister had 
been sent by the Lord Treasurer as ambassador to the 
needy poet. Addison readily undertook the proposed 
task, — a task which, to so good a Whig, was probably 
a pleasure. When the poem was little more than half 

15 finished he showed it to Godolphin, who was delighted 
with it, and particularly with the famous similitude of 
the angel. Addison was instantly appointed to a com- 
missionership worth about two hundred pounds a year, 
and was assured that this appointment was only an 

20 earnest of greater favors. 
l~5 The ' Campaign ' came forth, and was as much ad- 
mired by the public as by the minister. It pleases us 
less on the whole than the ' Epistle to. Halifax/ Yet it 
undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which appeared 

25 during the interval between the death of Dryden and the 
dawn of Pope's genius. The chief merit of the * Cam- 
paign,' we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson, 
the manly and rational rejection of fiction. The first 
great poet whose works have come down to us sang of 

3° war long before war became a science or a trade. If, in 
his time, there was enmity between two little Greek towns, 
each poured forth its crowd of citizens, ignorant of dis- 
cipline, and armed with implements of labor rudely turned 
into weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Zl 

few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to procure 
good armor, horses, and chariots, and whose leisure had 
enabled them to practise military exercises. One such 
chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and 
courage, would probably be more formidable than twenty 5 
common men ; and the force and dexterity with which 
he flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share in 
deciding the event of the day. Such were probably the 
battles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer 
related the actions of men of a former generation, — of 10 
men who sprang from the gods, and communed with the 
gods face to face ; of men one of whom could with ease 
hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later period 
would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally 
represented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, 15 
but far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest 
and most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, 
clad in celestial armor, drawn by celestial coursers, 
grasping the spear which none but himself could raise, 
driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking -o 
Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggera- 
tion of the real hero, who, strong, fearless, accustomed 
to the use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet 
of the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by horses 
of Thessalonian breed, struck down with his own right 25 
arm foe after foe. In all rude societies similar notions 
are found. There are at this day countries where the 
Life-guardsman Shaw would be considered as a much 
greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Bona- 
parte loved to describe the astonishment with which the 3° 
Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad 
Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his bodily 
strength and by the skill with which he managed his 
horse and his saber, could not believe that a man who 



36 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could 

^ be the greatest soldier in Europe. 
*\ ^ Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much 
truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether want- 
5 ing to the performances of those who, writing about bat- 
tles which had scarcely anything in common with the 
battles of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The 
folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is positively nau- 
seous. He undertook to record in verse the vicissitudes 

io of a great struggle between generals of the first order ; 
and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds 
which these generals inflicted with their own hands. 
Hasdrubal flings a spear, which grazes the shoulder of the 
consul Nero ; but Nero sends his spear into HasdrubaPs 

15 side. Fabius slays Thuris and Butes and Maris and 
Arses, and the long-haired Adherbes, and the gigantic 
Thylis, and Sapharus and Monaesus, and the trumpeter 
Morinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the groin 
with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus with 

20 a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in 
modern times, and continued to prevail down to the age 
of Addison. Several versifiers had described William 
turning thousands to flight by his single prowess, and 
dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable 

25 a writer as John Philips, the author of the * Splendid 
Shilling,' represented Marlborough as having won the 
battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and 
skill in fence. The following lines may serve as an 
example : — 

30 " Churchill, viewing where 

The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 

35 Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 



THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS 01- ADDISON. 37 

Attends his furious course. Around his head 

The glowing balls play innocent, while he 

With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 

Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 

He dyes his reeking sword, and strew T s the ground 5 

With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how 

Withstand his wide-destroying sword ? " 

I Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from 
this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the 
qualities which made Marlborough truly great, — energy, 10 
sagacity, military science. But above all, the poet ex- 
tolled the firmness of that mind which, in the midst of 
confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and disposed 
everything with the serene wisdom of ^a higher intelli- 
gence. 15 
K Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison 
of Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. We 
will not dispute the general justice of Johnson's remarks 
on this passage. But we must point out one circum- 
stance which appears to have escaped all the critics. 20 
The extraordinary effect which this simile produced 
when it first appeared, and which to the following gen- 
eration seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly 
attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a 
feeble parenthesis: — 

" Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia passed." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The 
great tempest of November, 1703, the only tempest which 
in our latitude has equaled the rage of a tropical hurri- 
cane, had left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all 30 
men. No other tempest was ever in this country the 
occasion of a parliamentary address or of a public fast. 
Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had 

been blown down. One prelate had been buried beneath 



38 THE LIFE AiYD WRITINGS OF ADD/SOX. 

the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had pre- 
sented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds 
of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks 
of large trees and the ruins of houses still attested, in all 
5 the southern counties, the fury of the blast. The popu- 
larity which the simile of the angel enjoyed among Addi- 
son's contemporaries has always seemed to us to be a 
remarkable instance of the advantage which, in rhetoric 
and poetry, the particular has over the general. 

ro Soon after the ' Campaign,' was published Addison's 
<y narrative of his travels in Italy. The first effect pro- 
duced by this narrative was disappointment. The crowd 
of readers who expected politics and scandal, specula- 
tions on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes 

15 about the jollities of convents and the amours of cardi- 
nals and nuns, were confounded by finding that the 
writer's mind was much more occupied by the war be- 
tween the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war between 
France and Austria; and that he seemed to have heard 

2o no scandal of later date than the gallantries of the Em- 
press Faustina. In time, however, the judgment of the 
many was overruled by that of the few ; and before the 
book was reprinted, it was so eagerly sought that it sold 
for five times the original price. It is still read with 

25 pleasure ; the style is pure and flowing ; the classical 
quotations and allusions are numerous and happy ; and 
we are now and then charmed by that singularly humane 
and delicate humor in which Addison excelled all men. 
Vet this agreeable work, even when considered merely 

30 as the history of a literary tour, may justly be censured 
on account of its faults of omission. We have already 
said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, 
it contains scarcely any references to the Latin orators 
and historians. We must add that it contains little, or 



6 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 39 

rather no, information respecting the history and litera- 
ture of modern Italy. To the best of our remembrance, 
Addison does not mention Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, 
Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, or Machiavelli. He 
coldly tells us that at Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, 5 
and that at Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of 
Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far less than 
for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris. The 
gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line of Silius to his mind. 
The sulphurous steam of Albula suggests to him several 10 
passages of Martial. But he has not a word to say of 
the illustrious dead of Santa Croce ; he crosses the wood 
of Ravenna without recollecting the Specter Huntsman, 
and wanders up and down Rimini without one thought of 
Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an introduc- 15 
tion to Boileau ; but he seems not to have been at all 
aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet 
with whom Boileau could not sustain a comparison, — of 
the greatest lyric poet of modern times, Vincenzio Fili- 
caja. This is the more remarkable because Filicaja was 20 
the favorite poet of the accomplished Somers, under 
whose protection Addison traveled, and to whom the 
account of the travels is dedicated. The truth is, that 
Addison knew little, and cared less, about the literature 
of modern Italy. His favorite models were Latin. Hi 
favorite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry 
that he had read seemed to him monstrous, and the Other 
half tawdry. 
His 'Travels' were followed by the lively opera of k R< 
amond.' This piece was ill set to music, and therefor* 
failed on the stage; but it completely succeeded in print, 
and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smoothness 
with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which 
they bound, are, to our ears at least, very pleasing. We 



40 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OE ADDISOX. 

are inclined to think that if Addison had left heroic 
couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had em- 
ployed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his 
reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it 
5 now does. Some years after his death, * Rosamond ' was 
set to new music by Doctor Arne, and was performed 
with complete success. Several passages long retained 
their popularity, and were daily sung, during the latter 
part of George the Second's reign, at all the harpsichords 
io in England. 

f While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, 
and the prospects of his party, were constantly becoming 
brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705 the minis- 
ters were freed from the restraint imposed by a House of 

15 Commons in which Tories of the most perverse class had 
the ascendency. The elections were favorable to the 
Whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and gradu- 
ally formed was now openly avowed. The Great Seal was 
given to Cowper. Somers and Halifax were sworn of the 

20 Council. Halifax was sent in the following year to carry 
the decorations of the Order of the Garter to the Electoral 
Prince of Hanover, and was accompanied on his honor- 
able mission by Addison, who had just been made Under- 
secretary of State. The Secretary of State under whom 
Addison first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. 
But Hedges was soon dismissed to make room for the 
most vehement of Whigs. Charles, Earl of Sunderland. 
In every department of the State, indeed, the High 
Churchmen were compelled to give place to their oppo- 

30 nents. At the close of 1707 the Tories who still remained 
in office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. But 
the attempt, though favored by the Queen, who had al- 
ways been a Tory at heart, and who had now quarreled 
with the Duchess of Marlborough, was unsuccessful. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 41 

The time was not yet. The Captain-General was at the 
height of popularity and glory. The Low Church party 
had a majority in Parliament. The country squires and 
rectors, though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were 
for the most part in a state of torpor, which lasted till 5 
they were roused into activity, and indeed into madness, 
by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Harley and his ad- 
herents were compelled to retire. The victory of the 
Whigs was complete. At the general election of 1708, 
their strength in the House of Commons became irresist- 10 
ible ; and before the end of that year, Somers was made 
Lord President of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland. 
L J? Addison sat for Malmesbury in the House of Commons 
which was elected in 1708. But the House of Com- 15 
mons was not the field for him. The bashfulness of his 
nature made his wit and eloquence useless in debate. 
He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and 
ever after remained silent. Nobody can think it strange 
that a great writer should fail as a speaker. But many, 20 
probably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as a 
speaker should have had no unfavorable effect on his suc- 
cess as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and 
great fortune might, though speaking very little and very 
ill, hold a considerable post. But it would now be incon- -5 
ceivable that a mere adventurer, a man who, when out oi 
office, must live by his pen, should in a few years become 
successively Undersecretary of Stale, Chief Secretary for 
Ireland, and Secretary of State, without some oratorical 
talent. Addison, without high birth and with litth 
property, rose to a post which dukes, the heads oi the 
great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, have 
thought it an honor to fill. Without opening his lips in 
debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chatham 01 



42 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OE ADDISOX. 

Fox ever reached. And this he did before he had been 
nine years in Parliament. We must look for the expla- 
nation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar circum- 
stances in which that generation was placed. During the 
5 interval which elapsed between the time when the censor- 
ship of the press ceased and the time when parliamentary 
proceedings began to be freely reported, literary talents 
were, to a public man, of much more importance, and 
oratorical talents of much less importance, than in our 

io time. At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide 
publicity to a fact or an argument is to introduce that 
fact or argument into a speech made in Parliament. If a 
political tract were to appear superior to the ' Conduct 
of the Allies,' or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, 

15 the circulation of such a tract would be languid indeed 
when compared with the circulation of every remarkable 
word uttered in the deliberations of the legislature. A 
speech made in the House of Commons at four in the 
morning is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech 

20 made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by mul- 
titudes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The orator, bv 
the help of the shorthand writer, has to a great extent 
superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign 
of Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect 

25 except on those who heard it. It was only by means of 
the press that the opinion of the public without doors 
could be influenced ; and the opinion of the public with- 
out doors could not but be of the highest importance in a 
country governed by parliaments, and indeed at that time 

30 governed by triennial parliaments. The pen was, there- 
fore, a more formidable political engine than the tongue. 
Mr. Pitt and Mr. Vox contended only in Parliament. 
But Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an earlier 
period, had not clone half of what was necessary when 






THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 43 

they sat down amidst the acclamations of the House of 
Commons. They had still to plead their cause before 
the country, and this they could only do by means of 
the press. Their works are now forgotten. But it is 
certain that there were in Grub Street few more assiduous 5 
scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, Remarks, than 
these two great chiefs of parties. Pulteney, when leader 
of the Opposition and possessed of thirty thousand a 
year, edited the Craftsinan. Walpble, though not a man 
of literary habits, was the author of at least ten pam- 10 
phlets, and retouched and corrected many more. These 
facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary 
assistance then was to the contending parties. St. John 
was certainly, in Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker; 
Cowper was probably the best Whig speaker. But it may 15 
well be doubted whether St. John did so much for the 
Tories as Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for 
the Whigs as Addison. When these things are duly con- 
sidered, it will not be thought strange that Addison 
should have climbed higher in the State than any other 20 
Englishman has ever, by means merely of literary talents, 
been able to climb. Swift would, in all probability, have 
climbed as high if he had not been encumbered by his 
cassock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the homage 
of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if he had 25 
been Lord Treasurer. 

To the influence which Addison derived from his liter- 
ary talents was added all the influence which arises from 
character. The world, always ready to think the worst 
of needy political adventurers, was forced to make one 
exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of 
principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that class 
of men. But faction itself could not deny that Addison 
had, through all changes of fortune, been strictly faithful 



bt 



44 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON, 

to his early opinions and to his early friends ; that his 
integrity was without stain ; that his whole deportment 
indicated a fine sense of the becoming ; that in the utmost 
heat of controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard 
5 for truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no outrage 
could ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of a 
Christian and a gentleman } and that his only faults were 
a too sensitive delicacy, and a modesty which amounted 
to bashfulness. 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of 
his time ; and much of his popularity he owed, we believe, 
to that very timidity which his friends lamented. That 
timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his talents 
to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It 

15 averted that envy which would otherwise have been 
excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an eleva- 
tion. No man is so great a favorite with the public as he 
who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, and of 
pity; and such were the feelings which Addison inspired. 

20 Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar 
conversation declared with one voice that it was superior 
even to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montagu said 
that she had known all the wits, and that Addison was 
the best company in the world. The malignant Pope 

25 was forced to own that there was a charm in Addison's 
talk which could be found nowhere else. Swift, when 
burning with animosity against the Whigs, could not but 
confess to Stella that, after all, he had never known any 
associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent 

3° judge of lively conversation, said that the conversation of 
Addison was at once the most polite and the most mirth- 
ful that could be imagined ; that it was Terence and 
Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something 
which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison 



Gi 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 45 

alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, 
said that when Addison was at his ease he went on in a 
noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain the 
attention of every hearer. Nor were Addison's great col- 
loquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and 5 
softness of heart which appeared in his conversation. At 
the same time, it would be too much to say that he was 
wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, insepara- 
ble from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one 
habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and which 10 
we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts to 
set a presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed 
his tone, " assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered 
coxcomb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such 
was his practice we should, we think, have guessed from 15 
his works. The Tatter's criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet, 
and the Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is so 
zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are excellent 
specimens of this innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his 20 
rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. 
As soon as he entered a large company, as soon as he 
saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed, and his man- 
ners became constrained. None who met him only in 
great assemblies would have been able to believe that he 
was the same man who had often kept a few friends lis- 
tening and laughing round a table from the time when 
the play ended till the clock of St. Paul's in Covenl 
Garden struck four. Yet even at such a table he was not 
seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his conversation 
in the highest perfection, it was necessary to be alone 
with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase, think aloud. 
" There is no such thing," he used to say, "as real 
conversation, but between two persons." 



/> 






{,1 



46 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

This timidity — a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor 
unamiable — led Addison into the two most serious faults 
which can with justice be imputed to him. He found that 
wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and 
5 was therefore too easily seduced into convivial exce 
Sue.. - was in that age regarded, even by grave 

men. as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so 
far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost 
essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the 

io smallest speck is seen on a white ground ; and almost all 
the biographers of Addison have said something about 
this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen 
Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he 
sometimes took too much wine than that he wore a long 

15 wig and a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we must 
ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very 
different cause. He became a little too fond of seeing 
himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to whom 

20 he was as a king, or rather as a god. All these men were 
far inferior to him in ability, and some of them had very 
serious faults. Nor did those faults escape his observa- 
tion : for if ever there was an eye which saw through and 
through men. it was the eye of Addison. But with the 

25 keenest observation, and the finest sense of the ridiculous, 
he had a large charity. The feeling with which he looked 
on most of his humble companions was one of benevo- 
lence, slightly tinctured with contempt. He was at per- 
fect ease in their company ; he was grateful for their 

30 devoted attachment: and he loaded them with benefits. 

Their veneration for him appears to have exceeded that 

h which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warbur- 

ton by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to 

turn such a head or deprave such a heart as Addison's. 



6^ 



H 



Y< 



r#£ Z/^£ AXD WRITINGS OF ADD1S0X. 47 

But it must in candor be admitted that he contracted 
some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by any 
person who is so unfortunate as to be the oracle of a 
small literary coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace Budgell, 5 
a young Templar of some literature, and a distant relation 
of Addison. There was at this time no stain on the char- 
acter of Budgell, and it is not improbable that his career 
would have been prosperous and honorable if the life of 
his cousin had been prolonged. But when the master 10 
was laid in the grave, the disciple broke loose from all 
restraint, descended rapidly from one degree of vice and 
misery to another, ruined his fortune by follies, attempted 
to repair it by crimes, and at length closed a wicked 
and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the 15 
wretched man, gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger as he 
was, retained his affection and veneration for Addison, 
and recorded those feelings in the last lines which he 
traced before he hid himself from infamy under London 
Bridge. 20 

Another of Addison's favorite companions was Am- 
brose Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, who 
had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of com- 
position which has been called, after his name, Namby- 
Pamby. But the most remarkable members of the little 
senate, as Pope long afterwards called it, were Richard 
Steele and Thomas Tickell. 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. They had 
been together at the Charterhouse and at Oxford; but 
circumstances had then, for a time, separated them w idelj 
Steele had left college without taking a degree, had been 
disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had 
served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's 
stone, and had written a religious treatise and several 



4S THE LITE AND WRITINGS OE ADD/SOX. 

comedies. He was one of those people whom it is impos- 
sible either to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, 
his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, 
and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning 
5 and repenting ; in inculcating what was right, and doing 
what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety 
and honor; in practice, he was much of the rake, and a 
little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured 
that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and 

io that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to 
blame him, when he diced himself into a spunging-house, 
or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded Steele 
with kindness not unmingled with scorn ; tried, with little 
success, to keep him out of scrapes ; introduced him to 

15 the great ; procured a good place for him ; corrected his 
plays ; and, though by no means rich, lent him large sums 
of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter 
dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a thousand 
pounds. These pecuniary transactions probably led to 

20 frequent bickerings. It is said that on one occasion 
Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to 
repay himself by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join 
with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it 
from Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private 

25 transactions which took place a hundred and twenty years 
ago are proved by stronger evidence than this. But we 
can by no means agree with those who condemn Addison's 
severity. The most amiable of mankind may well be 
moved to indignation when what he has earned hardly, 

3° and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the pur- 
pose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with 
insane profusion. We will illustrate our meaning by an 
example which is not the less striking because it is taken 
from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's ' Amelia/ is 



7) 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OE ADDISON. 49 

represented as the most benevolent of human beings ; yet 
he takes in execution, not only the goods, but the person 
of his friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong 
measure because he has been informed that Booth, while 
pleading poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, 5 
has been buying fine jewelry and setting up a coach. No 
person who is well acquainted with Steele's life and cor- 
respondence can doubt that he behaved quite as ill to 
Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. Harri- 
son. The real history, we have little doubt, was some- 10 
thing like this : A letter comes to Addison, imploring help 
in pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy 
repayment. Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch 
of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher 
for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. He deter- 15 
mines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to 
his series of the Twelve Caesars ; to put off buying the 
new edition of Bayle's Dictionary; and to wear his old 
sword and buckles another year. In this way he manages 
to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next day 20 
he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and 
ladies assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is 
groaning under champagne, burgundy, and pyramids of 
sweetmeats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is 
thus abused should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what 25 
is due to him ? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had 
introduced himself to public notice by writing a most 
ingenious and graceful little poem in praise of the opera 
of ' Rosamond.' He deserved, and at length attained, 
the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele 
and Tickell were on good teams. But they loved Addison 
too much to love each other, and at length became as 
bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil. 



SO THE LIFE AXD IVRITIXGS OF ADDISON. 

At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addi- 
son was consequently under the necessity of quitting 
London for Dublin. Besides the chief-secretaryship, which 
5 was then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he 
obtained a patent appointing him Keeper of the Irish 
Records for life, with a salary of three or four hundred a 
year. Budgell accompanied his cousin in the capacity of 
private secretary. 
a J^b Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but 
Whiggism. The Lord Lieutenant was not only licentious 
and corrupt, but was distinguished from other libertines 
and jobbers by a callous impudence which presented the 
strongest contrast to the Secretary's gentleness and deli- 

15 cacy. Many parts of the Irish administration at this time 
appear to have deserved serious blame. But against 
Addison there was not a murmur. He long afterwards 
asserted, what all the evidence which we have ever seen 
tends to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the 

20 friendship of all the most considerable persons in Ireland. 

J (i/ ^ ne P arnamentar y career of Addison in Ireland has, 

we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his biographers. 

He was elected member for the borough of Cavan in the 

summer of 1709 ; and in the journals of two sessions his 

25 name frequently occurs. Some of the entries appear to 
indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to make 
speeches. Nor is this by any means improbable ; for the 
Irish House of Commons was a far less formidable audi- 
ence than the English House ; and many tongues which 

30 were tied by fear in the greater assembly became fluent 
in the smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from 
fear of losing the fame gained by his single speech, sat 
mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke with great 
effect at Dublin when he was secretary to Lord Halifax. 



f< 



■* THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 51 

While Addison was in Ireland an event occurred to 
which he owes his high and permanent rank among 
British writers. As yet his fame rested on performances 
which, though highly respectable, were not built for dura- 
tion, and which would, if he had produced nothing else, 5 
have now been almost forgotten — on some excellent Latin 
verses, on some English verses which occasionally rose 
above mediocrity, and on a book of travels, agreeably 
written, but not indicating any extraordinary powers of 
mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, 10 
sense, and learning. The time had come when he was 
to prove himself a man of genius, and to enrich our liter- 
ature with compositions which will live as long as the 
^ /English language. 

' In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project 15 
of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the conse- 
quences. Periodical papers had during many years been 
published in London. Most of these were political ; but 
in some of them questions of morality, taste, and love- 
casuistry had been discussed. The literary merit of these 20 
works was small indeed ; and even their names are now 
known only to the curious. 

Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland, at 
/the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had access to 
foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than was *5 
in those times within the reach of an ordinary news- 
writer. This circumstance seems to have suggested to 
him the scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a 
new plan. It was to appear on the days on which the 
post left London for the country, which were, in that 
generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It 

was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical 

representations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of 

the Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the fash- 



1 



Mr 



52 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

ionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pas- 
quinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular 
preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have 
been at first higher than this. He was not ill qualified 
5 to conduct the work which he had planned. His public 
intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew the 
town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had 
read much more than the dissipated men of that time 
were in the habit of reading. He was a rake among 

10 scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was easy 
and not incorrect ; and though his wit and humor were 
of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his 
compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary readers 
could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His writings 

15 have been well compared to those light wines which, 
though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a pleasant 
small drink, if not kept too long or carried too far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary 
person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry 

20 or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the 
name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet against Par- 
tridge, the maker of almanacs. Partridge had been fool 
enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined 
in a second pamphlet still more diverting than the first. 

25 All the wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the 
town was long in convulsions of laughter. Steele deter- 
mined to employ the name which this controversy had 
made popular; and in April, 1709, it was announced that 
Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to pub- 
lish a paper called the Tatlcr. 

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme; but 
as soon as he heard of it he determined to give his assist- 
ance. The effect of that assistance cannot be better 
described than in Steele's own words. "I fared," he said, 



11 



r 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 53 

"like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor 
to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had 
once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence 
on him." "The paper," he says elsewhere, "was advanced 
indeed. It was raised to a greater thing than I intended 5 
it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. 
George's Channel his first contributions to the Tatlcr, had 
no notion of the extent and variety of his own powers. 
He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with a hundred 10 
ores. But he had been acquainted only with the least 
precious part of his treasures, and had hitherto contented 
himself with producing sometimes copper and sometimes 
lead, intermingled with a little silver. All at once, and by 
mere accident, he had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of 1 5 
the finest gold. 

The mere choice and arrangement of his words would 
have sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, not 
even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had the English 
language been written with such sweetness, grace, ami 20 
facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison's 
praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the half French 
style of Horace Walpole, or in the half Latin style <'f Dr, 
Johnson, or in the half German jargon of" the present daw 
his genius would have triumphed over all faults of man- .5 
ner. As a moral satirist he stands unrivaled. If ev< 
the best Tatlers and Spectators were equaled in their 

own kind, we should be inclined to guess that it must 
have been by the lost comedies of Menaiuler. 

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to 30 

Cowley or n u tier. No single ode ^\ Cowley contains so 

many happy analogies as are erowded into the lines tO Sil 

Godfrey Kjieller; and we would undertake to collect from 
the Spectators as great a number of ingenious illustrations 



54 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

as can be found in ' Hudibras.' The still higher faculty 
of invention Addison possessed in still larger measure. 
The numerous fictions, generally original, often wild and 
grotesque, but always singularly graceful and happy, which 
5 are found in his essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a 
great poet — a rank to which his metrical compositions give 
him no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all 
the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. 
And what he observed he had the art of communicating 

io in two widely different ways. He could describe virtues, 
vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could 
do something better. He could call human beings into 
existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish 
to find anything more vivid than Addison's best portraits, 

15 we must go either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes. 

But what shall we say of Addison's humor — of his 
sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that 
sense in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents which 
occur every day, and from little peculiarities of temper and 

20 manner, such as may be found in every man ? We feel 
the charm ; we give ourselves up to it ; but we strive in 
vain to analyze it. 

UK Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar 
pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of some 

25 other great satirists. The three most eminent masters of 
the art of ridicule during the eighteenth century were, we 
conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the 
three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be 
questioned. But each of them, within his own domain, 

3° was supreme. 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is 
without disguise or restraint. He gambols; he grins ; he 
shakes the sides; he points the finger; he turns up the 
nose ; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of Swift 



V 



%\ 



^ 



n 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADD /SON. 55 

is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but 
never joins in it. He appears in his works such as he 
appeared in society. All the company are convulsed with 
merriment, while the Dean, the author of all the mirth, 
preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of 5 
aspect, and gives utterance to the most eccentric and 
ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man reading the com- 
mination service. 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift 
as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the IO 
French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a double portion 
of severity into his countenance while laughing inwardly; 
but preserves a look peculiarly his own — a look of demure 
serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an 
almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost 1- 
imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that 
either of a Jack Pudding or of a cynic. It is that of a 
gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous 
is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding. 

We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opinion, 20 
of a more delicious flavor than the humor of either Swift 
or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain, that both 
Swift and Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and 
that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. The 
letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, 
and imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians of 
Paris. There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works 
which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's | 
writing. But of the many eminent men who have made 
Addison their model, though several have copied his men 
diction with happy effect, none have been able to catch 
the tone of his pleasantry. In the Worlds in the I 
seur y in the Mirror, in tin' / . there are numerous 

papers written in obvious imitation of his and 



8^ 



56 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

Spectatoi's. Most of these papers have some merit; many 
are very lively and amusing ; but there is not a single one 
which could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of the 
smallest perspicacity. 

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, 
from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters 
of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral purity 
which we find even in his merriment. Severity, gradually 
hardening and darkening into misanthropy, characterizes 

io the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, 
not inhuman ; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the 
masterpieces of art nor in the purest examples of virtue, 
neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma 
of the grave, could he see anything but subjects for drol- 

15 lery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more 
monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. The 
mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistophiles ; the mirth 
of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns 
oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of seraphim 

20 and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite 
perception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be 
none other than the mirth of Addison — a mirth consistent 
with tender compassion for all that is frail, and with pro- 
found reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing great, 

25 nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or 
revealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison 
with any degrading idea. His humanity is without a 
parallel in literary history. The highest proof of virtue 
is to possess boundless power without abusing it. No 

30 kind of power is more formidable than the power of 
making men ridiculous ; and that power Addison pos- 
sessed in boundless measure. How grossly that power 
was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. But 
of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has 



THE LIFE AAV WRITINGS OF AD DISC X. 57 

blackened no man's character; nay, that it would be diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he 
has left us a single taunt which can be called ungenerous 
or unkind. Yet he had detractors whose malignity might 
have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which 5 
men not superior to him in genius wreaked on Bettes- 
worth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politician; 
he was the best writer of his party; he lived in times of 
fierce excitement, in times when persons of high character 
and station stooped to scurrility such as is now practised 10 
only by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and 
no example could induce him to return railing for railing. 

fOf the service which his essays rendered to morality it 
is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when the 
Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profaneness and 15 
licentiousness which followed the Restoration had passed 
away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theaters into some- 
thing which, compared with the excesses of Etherege and 
Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet there still lin- 
gered in the public mind a pernicious notion that then 
was some connection between genius and profligacy, 
between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality ol 
the Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to 
have dispelled. He taught the nation that the faith and 

the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found in *S 
company with wit more sparkling than the wit ol Con- 

greve, and with humor richer than the humor o\ Yanbiu-h. 

So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery 
which had recently been directed against virtue, that, 

since his time, the open violation of decency has alwa 

been considered among us as the mark of a fool. And 
this revolution, the greatest >\m\ most salutary evei effe< ted 
by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, with 
out writing one personal lampoon. 



5S THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

Q 6 

In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler, his 
peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the 
first his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. 
Some of his later letters are fully equal to anything that 
5 he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire 
Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. 
The proceedings of the Court of Honor, the Thermometer 
of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words, the Memoirs of 
the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious and 

io lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all 
men. There is one still better paper of the same class. 
But though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years 
ago, was probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge's 
sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish readers 

15 of the nineteenth century. 

sji 1 During the session of Parliament which commenced in 

J J November, 1709, and which the impeachment of Sach- 

everell has made memorable, Addison appears to have 

resided in London. The Tatler was now more popular 

20 than any periodical paper had ever been ; and his connec- 
tion with it was generally known. It was not known, 
however, that almost everything good in the Tatler was 
his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers which 
we owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly 

2 5 the best that any five of them are more valuable than all 
the two hundred numbers in which he had no share. 

He required, at this time, all the solace which he could 
derive from literary success. The Queen had always dis- 
liked the Whigs. She had during some years disliked the 

3° Marlborough family. But, reigning by a disputed title, 
she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a 
majority of both Houses of Parliament ; and, engaged as 
she was in a war on the event of which her own crown 
was staked, she could not venture to disgrace a great and 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 59 

successful general. But at length, in the year 17 10, the 
cause which had restrained her from showing her aversion 
to the Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial of 
Sacheverell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely 
less violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves 5 
remember in 1820 and in 1831. The country gentlemen, 
the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were all, 
for once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general 
election took place before the excitement abated, the 
Tories would have a majority. The services of Marl- 10 
borough had been so splendid that they were no longer 
necessary. The Queen's throne was secure from all attack 
on the part of Louis. Indeed, it seemed much more 
likely that the English and German armies would divide 
the spoils of Versailles and Marli than that a Marsha] of 15 
France would bring back the Pretender to St. James 
The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, determined 
to dismiss her servants. In June the change commenced. 
Sunderland was the first who fell. The Tories exulted 
over his fall. The Whigs tried, during a few weeks, to 
persuade themselves that her Majesty had acted only 
from personal dislike to the Secretary, and that she 
meditated no further alteration. But early in August 
Godolphin was surprised by a letter from Anne, which 
directed him to break his white staff. Even after this 
event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Harley kept up 
the hopes of the Whigs during another month ; and then 
the ruin became rapid and violent. The Parliament was 

dissolved. The ministers were turned out. The I 
were called to oltiee. The tide of popularity ran \ iolenth 

in favor of the I [igh ( Ihurch party. That party, feeble in 
the late House of Commons, was nov irresistible. The 
power which the Tories had thus suddenly acquired they 

used with blind and stupid teroeilv. The howl whieh the 



?3 



60 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

whole pack set up for prey and for blood appalled even 
him who had roused and unchained them. When, at this 
distance of time, we calmly review the conduct of the 
discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of 
5 indignation at the injustice with which they were treated. 
No body of men had ever administered the government 
with more energy, ability, and moderation ; and their 
success had been proportioned to their wisdom. They 
had saved Holland and Germany. They had humbled 

io France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn Spain from 
the House of Bourbon. They had made England the first 
power in Europe. At home they had united England and 
Scotland. They had respected the rights of conscience 
and the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving their 

15 country at the height of prosperity and glory. And yet 
they were pursued to their retreat by such a roar of 
obloquy as was never raised against the government which 
threw away thirteen colonies, or against the government 
which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of 

20 YYalcheren. 

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck 
than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecun- 
iary losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly 
informed, when his secretaryship was taken from him. 

25 He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived 
of the small Irish office which he held by patent. He 
had just resigned his fellowship. It seems probable that 
he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great lady, 
and that, while his political friends were in power, and 

3° while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the 
phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, per- 
mitted to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer 
and Mr. Addison the Chief Secretary were, in her lady- 
ship's opinion, two very different persons. All these 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 61 

calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene 
cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich 
in its own wealth. He told his friends, with smiling 
resignation, that they ought to admire his philosophy; 
that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his fellow- 5 
ship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning tutor 
again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever. 
i/ (J He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which 

his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was 
the esteem with which he was regarded that, while the 10 
most violent measures were taken for the purpose of 
forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was 
returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, 
who was now in London, and who had already deter- 
mined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these 15 
remarkable words : " The Tories carry it among the new 
members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed 
easy and undisputed ; and I believe if he had a mind to 
be king, he would hardly be refused." 
^ The good will with which the Tories regarded Addison -o 
is the more honorable to him because it had not been 
purchased by any concession on his part. During the 
general election he published a political journal, entitled 
the Whig Examiner. Of that journal it may be sufficient 
to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political preju 
dices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of 
Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased to 
appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed his exulta 
tion at the death of so formidable an antagonist. " He 

might well rejoice," says Johnson, "al the death oi that 
which he could not have killed/ 1 "On no occasion," 

he adds, " was the genius of Addison more vigorously 
exerted, and on none did the superiority ^i his powers 

moiv evidently appear, 1 ' 



62 THE LITE AXD IVRITIXGS OF ADDISOX. 



q<b 



°fi 



<p 



The only use which Addison appears to have made of 
the favor with which he was regarded by the Tories was 
to save some of his friends from the general ruin of the 
Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation which 
5 made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But 
the case of Steele and of Ambrose Philips was different. 
For Philips, Addison even condescended to solicit; with 
what success we have not ascertained. Steele held two 
places. He was Gazetteer, and he was also a Commis- 

10 sioner of Stamps. The Gazette was taken from him. 
But he was suffered to retain his place in the Stamp 
Office, on an implied understanding that he should not be 
active against the new government: and he was, during 
more than two years, induced by Addison to observe this 

15 armistice with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon poli- 
tics, and the article of news, which had once formed about 
one-third of his paper, altogether disappeared. The 
Tatler had completely changed its character. It was 

20 now nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, and 
manners. Steele therefore resolved to bring it to a close, 
and to commence a new work on an improved plan. It 
was announced that this new work would be published 
daily. The undertaking was generally regarded as bold, 

25 or rather rash ; but the event amply justified the confi- 
dence with which Steele relied on the fertility of Addi- 
son's genius. On the 2d of January. 1711, appeared 
the last Tatler. At the beginning of March following 
appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers, 

30 containing observations on life and literature by an 
imaginary spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by 
Addison : and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait 
was meant to be in some features a likeness of the 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 63 

painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after pass- 
ing a studious youth at the university, has traveled on 
classic ground, and has bestowed much attention on curi- 
ous points of antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed 
his residence in London, and has observed all the forms 5 
of life which are to be found in that great city ; has daily 
listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked with the 
philosophers of the Grecian, and has mingled with the 
parsons at Child's, and with the politicians at the St. 
James's. In the morning, he often listens to the hum 10 
of the Exchange; in the evening, his face is constantly 
to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane Theater. But an in- 
surmountable bashfulness prevents him from opening his 
mouth except in a small circle of intimate friends. 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of 1 5 
the club, the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and 
the merchant, were uninteresting figures, fit only for a 
background. But the other two, an old country baronet 
and an old town rake, though not delineated with a very 
delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison took 20 
the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched them, 
colored them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir Roger 
de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with whom we are 
all familiar. 
I fat The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both 15 
original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in 
the series may be read with pleasure separately ; yet the 
five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a whole 
which has the interest of a novel. It must be remem- 
bered, too, that at that time no novel, giving a lively and I 
powerful picture of the common life and manners of Eng 

land, had appeared. Richardson was working as a com- 
positor. Fielding was robbing birds 1 nests. Smollett 

was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, whieh eon 



/ 



64 THE LIFE AXD WRITIXGS OF ADD/SOX. 

nects together the Spectator's essays gave to our ances- 
tors their firs: taste of an exquisite and untried pleasure. 
That narrative was, indeed, constructed with no art or 
labor. The events were such events as occur even- day. 
■ Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, as the 
worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes with 
the Spectator on the water to Spring Gardens, walks 
among the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the 
Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go 

10 to the theater when the essed Mother 1 is acted. 

The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley 
Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and 
the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, 
rides to the . and hears a point of law discussed 

; m Touchy. At last a letter from the honest butler 
brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is dead. 
Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The 
club breaks up, and the Spectator resigns his functions. 
Such events can hardly be said to form a plot ; yet they 

20 are related with such truth, such grace, such wit, such 
humor, such pathos, such knowledge of the human heart, 
such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm 
us on the hundredth perusal. We have not the least 
doubt that if Addison had written a novel on an exten- 
sive plan, it would have been superior to any that we 
possess. As i: is. he is entitled to be considered not 
only as the greatest of the English essayists, but as the 
forerunner of the great English novels 

We say this of Addison alone : for Addison is the 
Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work are I 
and it is no exaggeration to say that his worst essay is 
as good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His 
pproach near to absolute perfection ; nor is 
their excellence more wonderful than their variety. His 






THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 65 

invention never seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the 
necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a sub- 
ject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us 
after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that 
there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as 5 
we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is 
withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. 
On the Monday, we have an allegory as lively and ingen- 
ious as Lucian's * Auction of Lives' ; on the Tuesday, an 
Eastern apologue as richly colored as the tales of Sche- 10 
herezade ; on the Wednesday, a character described with 
the skill of La Bruyere ; on the Thursday, a scene from 
common life, equal to the best chapters in the ' Vicar of 
Wakefield'; on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry 
on fashionable follies, — on hoops, patches, or puppet- 15 
shows ; and on the Saturday, a religious meditation, 
which will bear a comparison with the finest passages in 
Massillon. 
J(\Om It is dangerous to select where there is so much that 

deserves the highest praise. We will venture, however, 20 
to say that any person who wishes to form a just notion 
of the extent and variety of Addison's powers will do 
well to read at one sitting the following papers : the two 
Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the 
Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the *5 
Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death of 
Sir Roger de Coverley. 
I a *\ The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the 
Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical 
papers. Yet his critical papers arc always luminous, 3 
and often ingenious. The very worst o\ them must be 
regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the 
School in which he hail been trained is fairly considered. 
The best of them were much too good for his readers. 



I& 



66 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he 
was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were 
more censured and derided than those in which he raised 
his voice against the contempt with which our fine old 
5 ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the 
same gold which, burnished and polished, gives luster to 
the ^Eneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the 
rude dross of ' Chevy Chase.' 

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator 
should have been such as no similar work has ever 
obtained. The number of copies daily distributed was 
at first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and 
had risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax was 
imposed. That tax w T as fatal to a crowd of journals. 

15 The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its 
price, and, though its circulation fell off, still yielded a 
large revenue both to the State and to the authors. For 
particular papers the demand was immense ; of some, it 
is said, twenty thousand copies were required. But this 

20 was not all. To have the Spectator served up every 
morning with the bohea and rolls was a luxury for the 
few. The majority were content to wait till essays 
enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand 
copies of each volume were immediately taken off, and 

2 5 new editions were called for. It must be remembered 
that the population of England was then hardly a third 
of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were 
in the habit of reading was probably not a sixth of 
what it now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found 

3° any pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was 
doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose coun- 
try seat did not contain ten books, receipt books and 
books on farriery included. In these circumstances the 
sale of the Spectator must be considered as indicating a 



')5' 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 67 

popularity quite as great as that of the most successful 
works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own 
time. 

At the close of 17 12 the Spectator ceased to appear. 
It was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman and 5 
his club had been long enough before the town; and that 
it was time to withdraw them, and to replace them by a 
new set of characters. In a few weeks the first number 
of the Guardian was published. But the Guardian was 
unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It began 10 
in dullness, and disappeared in a tempest of faction. The 
original plan was bad. Addison contributed nothing till 
sixty-six numbers had appeared ; and it was then impos- 
sible to make the Guardian what the Spectator had been. 
Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to 15 
whom even he could impart no interest. He could only 
furnish some excellent little essays, both serious and 
comic ; and this he did. 

Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian 
during the first two months of its existence, is a ques- 20 
tion which has puzzled the editors and biographers, but 
which seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. He 
was then engaged in bringing his ' Cato ' on the stage. 
j f The first four acts of this drama had been lying in his 
desk since his return from Italy. His modest and sensi- 25 
tive nature shrank from the risk of a public and shame- 
ful failure ; and though all who saw the manuscript were 
loud in praise, some thought it possible that an audience 
might become impatient even of very good rhetoric, and 
advised Addison to print the play without hazarding 
representation. At length, after many fits of apprehen- 
sion, the poet yielded to the urgency of his political 
friends, who hoped that the public would discover some 
analogy between the followers of C'asar and the Tories, 



/ 



' 



68 THE LIFE AND WAITINGS OF ADDISON. 

between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, between 
Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of Rome, and 
the band of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax 
j and Wharton. 
X 5 Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane 
Theater, without stipulating for any advantage to himself. 
They therefore thought themselves bound to spare no 
cost in scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, 
would not have pleased the skillful eye of Mr. Macready. 

io Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia's hoop 
was worthy of a duchess on the birthday; and Cato wore 
a wig worth fifty guineas. The prologue was written by 
Pope, and is undoubtedly a dignified and spirited compo- 
sition. The part of the hero was excellently played by 

15 Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. The boxes 
were in a blaze with the stars of the Peers in Opposition. 
The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly listeners 
from the Inns of Court and the literary coffee-houses. 
Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of the Bank of England, 

20 was at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from 
the City, warm men and true Whigs, but better known at 
Jonathan's and Garraway's than in the haunts of wits 

^and critics. 

These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, 

25' as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. 
Nor was it for their interest, professing, as they did, pro- 
found reverence for law and prescription, and abhorrence 
both of popular insurrections and of standing armies, to 
appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great 

30 military chief and demagogue who, with the support of 
the legions and of the common people, subverted all the 
ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every 
shout that was raised by the members of the Kit-Cat 
was echoed by the High Churchmen of the October ; and 



0, 



//I 



THE LIFE AND WAITINGS OF ADD/SOX. 69 

the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous 
applause. 

The delight and admiration of the town were described 
by the Guardian in terms which we might attribute to 
partiality, were it not that the Examiner, the organ of the 5 
ministry, held similar language. The Tories, indeed, 
found much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. 
Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more 
zeal than taste or judgment. The honest citizens who 
marched under the orders of Sir Gibby, as he was face- 10 
tiously called, probably knew better when to buy and 
when to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at 
a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the hypo- 
critical Sempronius their favorite, and by giving to his 
insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on 15 
the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had 
the incredible effrontery to applaud the lines about flying 
from prosperous vice and from the power of impious men 
to a private station, did not escape the sarcasms of those 
who justly thought that he could fly from nothing more 20 
vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, which 
was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was severely and 
not unreasonably censured as ignoble and out of place. 
But Addison was described, even by the bitterest Tory 
writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose 25 
friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and 
whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious 
squabbles. 

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party 
was disturbed, the most severe and happy was Boling 
broke's. Between two acts he sent for Booth to his box, 

and presented him, before the whole theater, with a purse 

of fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well 
against a perpetual Dictator, This was a pungent allu- 



70 THE LIFE A XI) WRITINGS OF ADD /SOX. 

sion to the attempt which Marlborough had made, not 
long before his fall, to obtain a patent creating him 
Captain-General for life. 
/ JL It was April ; and in April a hundred and thirty years 

5 ago the London season was thought to be far advanced. 
During a whole month, however, ' Cato ' was performed 
to overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury of 
the theater twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In the 
summer the Drury Lane Company went down to act at 

io Oxford, and there, before an audience which retained 
an affectionate remembrance of Addison's accomplish- 
ments and virtues, his tragedy was acted during several 
days. The gownsmen began to besiege the theater in 
the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all the seats 

T5 were filled. 

About the merits of the piece which had so extraordi- 

I Jj nary an effect, the public, w r e suppose, has made up its 

mind. To compare it with the masterpieces of the Attic 

stage, with the great English dramas of the time of Eliza- 

20 beth, or even with the productions of Schiller's manhood, 
would be absurd indeed. Yet it contains excellent dia- 
logue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned on 
the French model, must be allowed to rank high ; not 
indeed with ' Athalie ' or ' Saul ' ; but, we think, not below 

25 ' Cinna/ and certainly above any other English tragedy 
of the same school ; above many of the plays of Corneille ; 
above many of the plays of Voltaire and Alfieri ; and 
above some plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have 
little doubt that ' Cato ' did as much as the Tatlers, Sprc- 

30 tators, and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's fame 
among his contemporaries. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful dram- 
atist had tamed even the malignity of faction. But 
literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion than 



/« 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 71 

party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest 
attack on the Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis 
published ' Remarks on Cato/ which were written with 
some acuteness and with much coarseness and asperity. 
Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. On 5 
many points he had an excellent defense, and nothing 
would have been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had 
written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies ; he had, 
moreover, a larger share than most men of those infirmi- 
ties and eccentricities which excite laughter; and Addi- 10 
son's power of turning either an absurd book or an absurd 
man into ridicule was unrivaled. Addison, however, 
serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with pity on 
his assailant, whose temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, 
had been soured by want, by controversy, and by literary 1 5 
failures. 

^But among the young candidates for Addison's favor 
there was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and 
distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity and insin- 
cerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his powers had 20 
expanded to their full maturity ; and his best poem, the 
1 Rape of the Lock/ had recently been published. Of 
his genius Addison had always expressed high admira- 
tion. But Addison had early discerned, what might, 
indeed, have been discerned by an eye less penetrating -5 
than his, that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was 
eager to revenge himself on society for the unkindness 
of nature. In the Spectator the 4 Essay on Criticism ' 
had been praised with cordial warmth ; but a gentle hint 
had been added that the writer of so excellent a poem 
would have done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. 
Pope, though evidently more galled by the censure than 
gratified by the praise, returned thanks lor the admonition, 

and promised to profit by it. The two writers continued 



72 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

to exchange civilities, counsel, and small good offices. 
Addison publicly extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces, 
and Pope furnished Addison with a prologue. This did 
not last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured 
5 without provocation. The appearance of the ' Remarks 
on Cato ' gave the irritable poet an opportunity of vent- 
ing his malice under the show of friendship ; and such an 
opportunity could not but be welcome to a nature which 
was implacable in enmity, and which always preferred the 

io tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, 
the * Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis/ But Pope 
had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of 
invective and sarcasm ; he could dissect a character in 
terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with, antithesis; but 

1 5 of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had 
written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or 
that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. 
But Pope writing dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's 
imagery and his own — a wolf which, instead of biting, 

20 should take to kicking, or a monkey which should try to 
sting. The Narrative is utterly contemptible. Of argu- 
ment there is not even the show ; and the jests are such 
as, if they were introduced into a farce, would call forth 
the hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the 

25 drama, and the nurse thinks that he is calling for a dram. 
" There is," he cries, " no peripetia in the tragedy, no 
change of fortune, no change at all." — " Pray, good sir, 
be not angry," says the old woman ; " I '11 fetch change." 
This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 

3p There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this 

^officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. 
So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, 
and, if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do 
him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 73 

he had never, even in self-defense, used those powers 
inhumanly or uncourteously; and he was not disposed to 
let others make his fame and his interests a pretext under 
which they might commit outrages from which he had 
himself constantly abstained. He accordingly declared 5 
that he had no concern in the Narrative, that he disap- 
proved of it, and that if he answered the Remarks, he 
would answer them like a gentleman ; and he took care 
to communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mor- 
tified ; and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe 10 
the hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison. 

In September, 17 13, the Guardian ceased to appear. 
Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election 
had just taken place ; he had been chosen member for 
Stockbridge, and he fully expected to play a first part in 1 5 
Parliament. The immense success of the Tatter and 
Spectator had turned his head. He had been the editor 
of both those papers, and was not aware how entirely 
they owed their influence and popularity to the genius of 
his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now excited 20 
by vanity, ambition, and faction to such a pitch that he 
every day committed some offense against good sense 
and good taste. All the discreet and moderate members 
of his own party regretted and condemned his folly. " I 
am in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, "about poor 25 
Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not be 
ruinous to himself. But he has sent me word that he is 
determined to go on, and that any advice I may give him 
in this particular will have no weight with him." 
/ (q Steele set up a political paper called the Englishman^ 3° 
which, as it was not supported by contributions from 
Addison, completely failed. By this work, by some other 
writings of the same kind, and by the airs which he gave 

himself at the first meeting of the new Parliament, he 



//9 

ic 



74 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

made the Tories so angry that they determined to expel 
him. The Whigs stood by him gallantly, but were unable 
to save him. The vote of expulsion was regarded by all 
dispassionate men as a tyrannical exercise of the power of 
the majority. But Steele's violence and folly, though they 
by no means justified the steps which his enemies took, had 
completely disgusted his friends ; nor did he ever regain 
the place which he had held in the public estimation. 
Addison about this time conceived the design of add- 

o ing an eighth volume to the Spectator. In June, 17 14, 
the first number of the new series appeared, and during 
about six months three papers were published weekly. 
Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between 
the Englishma?i and the eighth volume of the Spectator, — 

15 between Steele without Addison and Addison without 
Steele. The Englishman is forgotten ; the eighth volume 
of the Spectator contains perhaps the finest essays, both 
serious and playful, in the English language. 
a y Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne 
* 20 produced an entire change in the administration of pub- 
lic affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the Tory 
party distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for 
any great effort. Harley had just been disgraced. 
Bolingbroke, it was supposed, would be the chief minis- 

25 ter. But the Queen was on her deathbed before the 
white staff had been given, and her last public act was 
to deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of Shrews- 
bury. The emergency produced a coalition between all 
sections of public men who were attached to the Protes- 

3° tant succession. George the First was proclaimed with- 
out opposition. A council, in which the leading Whigs 
had seats, took the direction of affairs till the new King 
should arrive. The first act of the Lords Justices was to 
appoint Addison their Secretary. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 75 

) \ \ There is an idle tradition that he was directed to pre- 
pare a letter to the King, that he could not satisfy him- 
self as to the style of this composition, and that the 
Lords Justices called in a clerk, who at once did what 
was wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering 5 
to mediocrity should be popular ; and we are sorry to 
deprive dunces of their consolation. But the truth must 
be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, 
whose knowledge of these times was unequaled, that 
Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or 10 
eloquence, and that his despatches are, without excep- 
tion, remarkable for unpretending simplicity. Everybody 
who knows with what ease Addison's finest essays were 
produced must be convinced that, if well-turned phrases 
had been wanted, he would have had no difficulty in find- 15 
ing them. We are, however, inclined to believe that the 
story is not absolutely without a foundation. It may well 
be that Addison did not know, till he had consulted expe- 
rienced clerks who remembered the times when William 
the Third was absent on the Continent, in what form a 20 
letter from the Council of Regency to the King ought to 
be drawn. We think it very likely that the ablest states- 
men ef our time — Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel. 
Lord Palmerston, for example — would, in similar circum- 
stances, be found quite as ignorant. Every office has 25 
some little mysteries which the dullest man may learn 
with a little attention, and which the greatest man cannot 
possibly know by intuition. One paper must be signed 
by the chief of the department; another by his deputy ; 
to a third the royal sign-manual is necessary. One rem- 30 
munication is to be registered, and another is not. One 
sentence must be in black ink, and another in red ink. 
If the ablest Secretary for Ireland were moved to the 
India Board, if the ablest President of the India Board 



76 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

were moved to the War Office, he would require instruc- 
tion on points like these ; and we do not doubt that Addi- 
son required such instruction when he became, for the 
first time, Secretary to the Lords Justices. 

• »> George the First took possession of his kingdom with- 
out opposition. A new ministry was formed, and a new 
Parliament favorable to the Whigs chosen. Sunderland 
was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison 
again went to Dublin as Chief Secretary. 
-jo3 At Dublin Swift resided; and there was much specula- 
tion about the way in which the Dean and the Secretary 
would behave towards each other. The relations which 
existed between these remarkable men form an interest- 
ing and pleasing portion of literary history. They had 

15 early attached themselves to the same political party and 
to the same patrons. While Anne's Whig ministry was 
in power, the visits of Swift to London and the official 
residence of Addison in Ireland had given them opportu- 
nities of knowing each other. They were the two shrewd- 

20 est observers of their age. But their observations on 
each other had led them to favorable conclusions. Swift 
did full justice to the rare powers of conversation which 
were latent under the bashful deportment of Addison. 
Addison, on the other hand, discerned much good nature 

2 5 under the severe look and manner of Swift ; and, indeed, 
the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738 were two very 
different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. The 
Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid benefits. They 

30 praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothing more 
for him. His profession laid them under a difficulty. In 
the State they could not promote him ; and they had 
reason to fear that, by bestowing preferment in the Church 
on the author of the 'Tale of a Tub,' thev misrht give 



i*1 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 77 

scandal to the public, which had no high opinion of their 
orthodoxy. He did not make fair allowance for the diffi- 
culties which prevented Halifax and Somers from serving 
him, thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor 
and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and became 5 
their most formidable champion. He soon found, how- 
ever, that his old friends were less to blame than he had 
supposed. The dislike with which the Queen and the 
heads of the Church regarded him was insurmountable ; 
and it was with the greatest difficulty that he obtained an 10 
ecclesiastical dignity of no great value, on condition of 
fixing his residence in a country which he detested. 
^ f* Difference of political opinion had produced, not in- 
deed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Addi- 
son. They at length ceased altogether to see each other. 15 
Yet there was between them a tacit compact like that 
between the hereditary guests in the Iliad : — 

"E7xe<x 8' a\\r)\(jjv dXedofxeda /cat 8l ojulIXov 

HoXkoi fxev yap e/xot Tp&es /cXetrot t iwLKOvpoi, 

KreiveLv, 6v /ce Beos ye irbprj /cat woaai /axe£a>, 20 

IloXXoi 5' av <Tol 'Axcuot evatp^fiev, 6V /ce 5vvr]ai. 



y«*i. 



"7 



is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and 
insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or insulted 
Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to whom neither 
genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally seemed 25 
to find, like most other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in 
attacking old friends, should have shown so much respect 
and tenderness to Addison. 

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the 
House of Hanover had secured in England the liberties 3° 
of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the Protes- 
tant caste. To that caste Swift was more odious than 
any other man. I le was hooted and even pelted in the 



7S THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OE ADDISON. 

streets of Dublin ; and could not venture to ride along 
the strand for his health without the attendance of armed 
servants. Many whom he had formerly served now 
libeled and insulted him. At this time Addison arrived. 
5 He had been advised not to show the smallest civility to 
the Dean of St. Patrick's. He had answered, with admir- 
able spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose 
fidelity to their party was suspected to hold no intercourse 
with political opponents ; but that one who had been a 

io steady Whig in the worst times might venture, when the 
good cause was triumphant, to shake hands with an old 
friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. His kind- 
ness was soothing to the proud and cruelly wounded spirit 
of Swift ; and the two great satirists resumed their habits 

15 of friendly intercourse. 

Those associates of Addison whose political opinions 
** agreed with his shared his good fortune. He took Tick- 
ell with him to Ireland. He procured for Budgell a 
lucrative place in the same kingdom. Ambrose Philips 

20 was provided for in England. Steele had injured himself 
so much by his eccentricity and perverseness that he ob- 
tained but a very small part of what he thought his due. 
He was, however, knighted; he had a place in the house- 
hold ; and he subsequently received other marks of favor 

25 from the court. 

I * Q Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 17 15 he 
p quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of Trade. 
In the same year his comedy of the ' Drummer ' was 
brought on the stage. The name of the author was not an- 
3° nounced; the piece was coldly received; and some critics 
have expressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. 
To us the evidence, both external and internal, seems 
decisive. It is not in Addison's best manner; but it 
contains numerous passages which no other writer known 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 79 

to us could have produced. It was again performed 
after Addison's death, and, being known to be his, was 
loudly applauded. 
I ? Towards the close of the year 17 15, while the rebel- 
lion was still raging in Scotland, Addison published the 5 
first number of a paper called the Freeholder. Among his 
political works the Freeholder is entitled to the first place. 
Even in the Spectator there are few serious papers nobler 
than the character of his friend Lord Somers, and cer- 
tainly no satirical papers superior to those in which the 10 
Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This character is the 
original of Squire Western, and is drawn with all Field- 
ing's force, and with a delicacy of which Fielding was 
altogether destitute. As none of Addison's works exhibit 
stronger marks of his genius than the Freeholder, so none 15 
does more honor to his moral character. It is difficult 
to extol too highly the candor and humanity of a political 
writer whom even the excitement of civil war cannot hurry 
into unseemly violence. Oxford, it is well known, was 
then the stronghold of Toryism. The High Street had 20 
been repeatedly lined with bayonets in order to keep 
down the disaffected gownsmen ; and traitors pursued by 
the messengers of the government had been concealed 
in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the admonition 
which, even under such circumstances, Addison addressed 2 5 
to the university, is singularly gentle, respectful, and even 
affectionate. Indeed, he could not find it in his heart 
to deal harshly even with imaginary persons. Mis fox- 
hunter, though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart 1 
good fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clemency 3° 
of the King. Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's 
moderation, and, though he acknowledged that the /> 
holder was excellently written, complained that the min 
istry played on a lute when it was necessary to Mow the 



SO THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 01 ADD/SOX. 

trumpet. He accordingly determined to execute a flour- 
ish after his own fashion, and tried to rouse the public 
spirit of the nation by means of a paper called the 2 
Talk, which is now as utterly forgotten as his Englishman. 
5 as his 'Crisis, ' as his 'Letter to the Bailiff of Stock- 
bridge.' as his Reader^ — in short, as everything that he 
wrote without the help of Addison. 

In the same year in which the k Drummer ' was acted, 
and in which the first numbers of the Freeholder appeared, 

io the estrangement of Pope and Addison became complete. 
Addison had from the first seen that Pope was false and 
malevolent. Pope had discovered that Addison was jeal- 
ous. The discovery was made in a strange manner. Pope 
had written the ' Rape of the Lock." in two cantos, with- 
: out supernatural machinery. These two cantos had been 
loudly applauded, and by none more loudly than by Addi- 
son. Then Pope thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes. — 
Ariel. Momentilla. Crispissa, and Umbriel. — and resolved 
to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology with the original 

20 fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Addison said that 
the poem as it stood was a delicious little thing, and en- 
treated Pope not to run the risk of marring what was so 
excellent in trying to mend it. Pope afterwards declared 
that this insidious counsel first opened his eyes to the 

25 I of him who gave it. 

I ^ ^ Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most 

ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it with great 

skill and success. But does it necessarily follow that 

Addison's advice was bad ? And if Addison's advice was 

30 bad. does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad 
motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would 
advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances 
were ten to one 5t him. we should do our best to 

dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if he were 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 81 

so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we 
should not admit that we had counseled him ill ; and 
we should certainly think it the height of injustice in him 
to accuse us of having been actuated by malice. We 
think Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound 5 
principle, the result of long and wide experience. The 
general rule undoubtedly is that, when a successful work 
of imagination has been produced, it should not be recast. 
We cannot at this moment call to mind a single instance 
in which this rule has been transgressed with happy 10 
effect, except the instance of the ' Rape of the Lock.' 
Tasso recast his ' Jerusalem.' Akenside recast his 
' Pleasures of the Imagination ' and his ' Epistle to 
Curio.' Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the 
success with which he had expanded and remodeled 15 
the ' Rape of the Lock,' made the same experiment 
on the 'Dunciad.' All these attempts failed. Who was 
to foresee that Pope would, once in his life, be able to do 
what he could not himself do twice, and what nobody else 
has ever done ? 20 

) Addison's advice was good. But had it bee n bad , why 
should we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells us that 
one of his best friends predicted the failure of Waverley. 
Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a sub- 
ject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from -5 
writing the ' History of Charles the Fifth.' Nay, Pope 
himself was one of those who prophesied that ' CatO ' 
would never succeed on the stage, and advised Addison 
to print it without risking a representation. But Scott, 
Goethe, Robertson, Addison had the good sense and 3° 
generosity to give their advisers credit for the best inten- 
tions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind with theirs. 
j^ Lj In 1 7 1 5, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, 
lie met Addison at a coffee-house. Philips and BudgeU 



S2 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

were there ; but their sovereign got rid of them, and 
asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner, Addi- 
son said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished 
to explain. " Tickell," he said, " translated some time 
5 ago the first book of the Iliad. I have promised to look 
it over and correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask to see 
yours ; for that would be double-dealing." Pope made a 
civil reply, and begged that his second book might have 
the advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily 

io agreed, looked over the second book, and sent it back 
with warm commendations. 
l<i\ Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after 
this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry was ear- 
nestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he should not 

15 go on with the Iliad. That enterprise he should leave 
to powers which he admitted to be superior to his own. 
His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was 
to bespeak the favor of the public to a translation of the 
Odyssey, in which he had made some progress. 
I ft {$ Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pronounced 
both the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had 
more of the original. The town gave a decided prefer- 
ence to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to settle 
such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can 

25 be said to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the 
word translation be used in the sense which it bears 
in the k Midsummer Night's Dream.' When Bottom 
makes his appearance with an ass's head instead of his 
own, Peter Quince exclaims, " Bless thee ! Bottom, bless 

30 thee ! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, 

the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly 

exclaim, "Bless thee, Homer ! thou art translated indeed." 

1 'Si Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking 

that no man in Addison's situation could have acted 



2 
I 



m 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 83 

more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope and towards 
Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an odious 
suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fan- 
cied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep 
conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The 5 
work on which he had staked his reputation was to be 
depreciated. The subscription on which rested his hopes 
of a competence was to be defeated. With this view 
Addison had made a rival translation; Tickell had con- 
sented to father it; and the wits of Button's had united to 
to puff it. 

Is there any external evidence to support this grave 
accusation ? The answer is short. There is absolutely 
none. 

Was there any internal evidence which proved Addi- 15 
son to be the author of this version ? Was it a work 
which Tickell was incapable of producing ? Surely not. 
Tickell was a fellow of a college at Oxford, and must be 
supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and 
he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not 20 
aware that Pope pretended to have discovered any turns 
of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of 
expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently 
accounted for by supposing Addison to have corrected 
his friend's lines, as he owned that he had done. 2 5 

Is there anything in the character of the accused per- 
sons which makes the accusation probable ? We answer 
confidently — nothing. Tickell was long after this time 
described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy man. 
Addison had been, during many years, before the public. 3° 
Literary rivals, political opponents, had kept their eyes 
on him. But neither envy nor faction, in its utmost 
rage, had ever imputed to him a single deviation from the 
laws of honor and of soeial morality. Had he been 



S4 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ALDISOX. 

indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable of 
stooping to base and wicked acts for the purpose of injur- 
ing his competitors, would his vices have remained latent 
so long ? He was a writer of tragedy : had he ever 
5 injured Rowe ? He was a writer of comedy : had he not 
done ample justice to Congreve, and given valuable help 
to Steele ? He was a pamphleteer : have not his good 
nature and generosity been acknowledged by Swift, his 
rival in fame and his adversary in politics ? 
. ^ipi That Tickell should have been guilty of a villainy 
seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should 
have been guilty of a villainy seems to us highly im- 
probable. But that these two men should have conspired 
together to commit a villainy seems to us improbable in a 
x 5 tenfold degree. All that is known to us of their inter- 
course tends to prove that it was not the intercourse 
of two accomplices in crime. These are some of the lines 
in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the coffin 
of Addison : — 

20 " Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 

A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 

Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 

To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 

When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
25 When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 

In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 

And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 

Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
*\ Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 

I T° In what words, we should like to know, did this guard- 
ian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the 
editor of the Satirist would hardly dare to propose to 



it* 



the editor of the Age? 



We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation which 
35 he knew to be false. We have not the smallest doubt 



N% 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS QF ADDISON. 85 

that he believed it to be true ; and the evidence on which 
he believed it he found in his own bad heart. His own 
life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as mali- 
cious as that of which ha suspected Addison and Tickell. 
He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, and 5 
to save himself from the consequences of injury and 
insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his life. 
He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos; he 
was taxed with it ; and he lied and equivocated. He pub- 
lished a lampoon on Aaron Hill ; he was taxed with it ; 10 
and he lied and equivocated. He published a still fouler 
lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ; he was taxed 
with it ; and he lied with more than usual effrontery and 
vehemence. He puffed himself and abused his enemies 
under feigned names. He robbed himself of his own 15 
letters, and then raised the hue and cry after them. 
Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of interest, and 
of vanity, there 'were frauds which he seems to have com- 
mitted from love of fraud alone. He had a habit of 
stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near 20 
him. Whatever his object might be, the indirect road to 
it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke Pope 
undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it was 
in his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope 
was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no 25 
motive except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty 
of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. 

Nothing was more natural than that such a man as this 
should attribute to others that which he felt within him- 
self. A plain, probable, coherent explanation is frankly 3° 
given to him. He is certain that it is all a romance. A 
line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even friendly, 
is pursued towards him. He is convinced that it is 
merely a cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to be 



itf 



S6 THE LIFE AXD U'RITIXGS OF ADDISOX. 

disgraced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for proofs. 
He has none, and wants none, except those which he 
carries in his own bosom. 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison 
5 to retaliate for the first and last time cannot now be 
known with certainty. We have only Pope's story, 
which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some 
reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What those 
reflections were, and whether they were reflections of 

io which he had a right to complain, we have now no means 
of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and vicious 
lad. who regarded Addison with the feelings with which 
such lads generally regard their best friends, told Pope, 
truly or falsely, that this pamphlet had been written by 

15 Addison's direction. When we consider what a tendency 
stories have to grow, in passing even from one honest 
man to another honest man, and when we consider that 
to the name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of 
Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed to attach 

20 much importance to this anecdote. 
\\ (4 It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had 

' already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. In 
his anger he turned this prose into the brilliant and ener- 
getic lines which everybody knows by heart, or ought to 

25 know by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge 
which Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not 
without foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to 
believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of humble 
friends. Of the other imputations which these famous 

3° lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has ever been 
proved to be just, and some are certainly false. That 
Addison was not in the habit of " damning with faint 
praise '' appears from innumerable passages in his writ- 
ings, and from none more than from those in which he 



<9t 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 87 

mentions Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but ridicu- 
lous, to describe a man who made the fortune of almost 
every one of his intimate friends as " so obliging that he 
ne'er obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly we 5 
annot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the 
weaknesses with which he was reproached is highly prob- 
able. But his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted him of 
the gravest part of the accusation. He acted like him- 
self. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than 10 
Pope's match ; and he would have been at no loss for 
topics. A distorted and diseased body, tenanted by a yet 
more distorted and diseased mind; spite and envy thinly 
disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as those 
which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a 15 
feeble, sickly licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and 
noisome images; — these were things which a genius less 
powerful than that to which we owe the Spectator could 
easily have held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind. 
Addison had, moreover, at his command other means of 20 
vengeance which a bad man would not have scrupled to 
use. He was powerful in the State. Pope was a Catholic; 
and in those times, a minister would have found it easy 
to harass the most innocent Catholic by innumerable 
petty vexations. Pope, near twenty years later, said that 25 
" through the lenity of the government alone he could 
live with comfort." . " Consider," he exclaimed, k ' the 
injury that a man of high rank and credit may do to a 
private person, under penal laws and many other disad- 
vantages." It is pleasing to reflect that the only reveng< 
which Addison took was to insert in the Freeholder a warm 
encomium on the translation of the Iliad, and to exhort 
all lovers of learning to put down their names as sub- 
scribers. There could he no doubt, he said, from the 



)Hf 



88 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

specimens already published, that the masterly hand of 
Pope would do as much for Homer as Dryden had done 
for Virgil. From that time to the end of his life, he 
always treated Pope, by Pope's own acknowledgment, 
5 with justice. Friendship was, of course, at an end. 

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to 
play the ignominious part of talebearer on this occasion 
may have been his dislike of the marriage which was 
about to take place between his mother and Addison. 

10 The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honor- 
able family of the Middletons of Chirk, — a family which, 
in any country but ours, would be called noble, — resided 
at Holland House. Addison had, during some years, occu- 
pied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell 

15 Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Hol- 
land House may be called a town residence. But in the 
days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sports- 
men wandered between green hedges and over fields 
bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore 

20 of the Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were coun- 
try neighbors, and became intimate friends. The great 
wit and scholar tried to allure the young lord from the 
fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, breaking 
windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn 

25 Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of virtue. 
These well-meant exertions did little good, however, 
either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick 
grew up a rake ; and Addison fell in love. The mature 
beauty of the Countess has been celebrated by poets in 

3° language which, after a very large allowance has been 
made for flattery, would lead us to believe that she was 
a fine woman; and her rank doubtless heightened her 
attractions. The courtship was long. The hopes of the 
lover appear to have risen and fallen with the fortunes of 



/ 



V* 



h'J 



THE LITE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 89 

his party. His attachment was at length matter of such 
notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, 
Rowe addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of 
Holland House. It strikes us as a little strange that, in 
these verses, Addison should be called Lycidas, a name 5 
of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to cross St. 
George's Channel. 

At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able 
to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason to 
expect preferment even higher than that which he had 10 
attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother 
who died Governor of Madras. He had purchased an 
estate in Warwickshire, and had been welcomed to his 
domain in very tolerable verse by one of the neighboring 
squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somervile. In 15 
August, 17 16, the newspapers announced that Joseph 
Addison, Esquire, famous for many excellent works, both 
in verse and prose, had espoused the Countess Dowager 
o£ Warwick. 

* He now fixed his abode at Holland House, — a house 20 
which can boast of a greater number of inmates distin- 
guished in political and literary history than any other 
private dwelling in England. His portrait still hangs 
there. The features are pleasing; the complexion is 
remarkably fair ; but in the expression we trace rather 25 
the gentleness of his disposition than the force and keen- 
ness of his intellect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the height of 
civil greatness. The Whig Government had, during some 
time, been torn by internal dissensions. Lord Townshend 3° 
led one section of the Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other, 
At length, in the spring of 1717, Sunderland triumphed. 
Townshend retired from office, and was accompanied by 
Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland proceeded to recoil" 



90 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OF ADDISOX. 

struct the Ministry ; and Addison was appointed Secretary 
of State. It is certain that the seals were pressed upon 
him, and were at first declined by him. Men equally 
versed in official business might easily have been found ; 
5 and his colleagues knew that they could not expect assist- 
ance from him in debate. He owed his elevation to his 
popularity, to his stainless probity, and to his literary 
fame. 
%l* w But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when his 
* 10 health began to fail. From one serious attack he recov- 
ered in the autumn ; and his recovery was celebrated in 
Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vincent Bourne, 
who was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse 
soon took place ; and in the following spring, Addison 

15 was prevented by a severe asthma from discharging the 
duties of his post. He resigned it, and was succeeded 
by his friend Craggs, a young man whose natural parts, 
though little improved by cultivation, were quick and 
showy, whose graceful person and winning manners had 

20 made him generally acceptable in society, and who, if he 

had lived, would probably have been the most formidable 

of all the rivals of Walpole. 

s *k As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The ministers, 

ft) therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring 

25 pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what form 
this pension was given we are not told by the biogra- 
phers, and have not time to inquire. But it is certain 
that Addison did not vacate his seat in the House of 
Commons. 

3° Rest of mind and body seems to have reestablished his 
health ; and he thanked God, with cheerful piety, for hav- 
ing set him free both from his office and from his asthma. 
Many years seemed to be before him, and he meditated 
many works, — a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a trans- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 91 

lation of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of Chris- 
tianity. Of this last performance a part, which we could 
well spare, has come down to us. 
J j J But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradually 
prevailed against all the resources of medicine. It is mel- 5 
ancholy to think that the last months of such a life should 
have been overclouded both by domestic and by political 
vexations. A tradition which began early, which has 
been generally received, and to which we have nothing to 
oppose, has represented his wife as an arrogant and impe- 10 
rious woman. It is said that, till his health failed him, 
he was glad to escape from the Countess Dowager and 
her magnificent dining-room, blazing with the gilded 
devices of the House of Rich, to some tavern where he 
could enjoy a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and 15 
a bottle of claret with the friends of his happier days. 
All those friends, however, were not left to him. Sir 
Richard Steele had been gradually estranged by various 
causes. He considered himself as one who, in evil times, 
had braved martyrdom for his political principles, and 20 
demanded, when the Whig party was triumphant, a large 
compensation for what he had suffered when it was mili- 
tant. The Whig leaders took a very different view of his 
claims. They thought that he had, by his own petulance 
and folly, brought them as well as himself into trouble. 25 
and, though they did not absolutely neglect him, doled 
out favors to him with a sparing hand. It was natural 
that he should be angry with them, and especially angry 
with Addison. But what above all seems to have dis- 
turbed Sir Richard was the elevation of Tickell, who, at 30 
thirty, was made by Addison Undersecretary o( State, 
while the editor of the Tatter and Spectator, the author of 
the ' Crisis,' the member for Stockbridge who had been 
persecuted for firm adherence t<> the House of Hanover. 



92 THE LIFE AXD WRITINGS OF ADDISOX. 

was, at near fifty, forced, after many solicitations and 
complaints, to content himself with a share in the patent 
of Drury Lane Theater. Steele himself says, in his cele- 
brated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by his preference 
5 of Tickell, " incurred the warmest resentment of other 
gentlemen " ; and everything seems to indicate that of 
. those resentful gentlemen Steele was himself one. 
* Vfr While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he 
considered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause of quar- 

io rel arose. The Whig party, already divided against itself, 
was rent by a new schism. The celebrated bill for limit- 
ing the number of peers had been brought in. The proud 
Duke of Somerset, first in rank of all the nobles whose 
religion permitted them to sit in Parliament, was the 

15 ostensible author of the measure. But it was supported, 
and, in truth, devised by the Prime Minister. 
7 We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious; and 
ire fear that the motives which induced Sunderland to 
frame it were not honorable to him. But we cannot 

20 deny that it was supported by many of the best and 
wisest men of that age. Nor was this strange. The 
royal prerogative had, within the memory of the genera- 
tion then in the vigor of life, been so grossly abused 
that it was still regarded with a jealousy which, when 

2 5 the peculiar situation of the House of Brunswick is con- 
sidered, may perhaps be called immoderate. The par- 
ticular prerogative of creating peers had, in the opinion 
of the Whigs, been grossly abused by Queen Anne's last 
Ministry; and even the Tories admitted that her Majesty, 

3° in swamping, as it has since been called, the Upper 
House, had done what only an extreme case could justify. 
The theory of the English constitution, according to 
many high authorities, was that three independent 
powers, the sovereign, the nobility, and the commons. 



w< 






H 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 93 

ought constantly to act as checks on each other. If this 
theory were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one of 
these powers under the absolute control of the other two 
was absurd. But if the number of peers were unlimited, 
it could not well be denied that the Upper House was 5 
under the absolute control of the Crown and the Com- 
mons, and was indebted only to their moderation for any 
power which it might be suffered to retain. 

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with 
the ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, 10 
vehemently attacked the bill. Sunderland called for 
help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a 
paper called the Old Whig he answered, and indeed re- 
futed, Steele's arguments. It seems to us that the prem- 
ises of both the controversialists were unsound; that, on 15 
those premises, Addison reasoned well and Steele ill, and 
that consequently Addison brought out a false conclu- 
sion, while Steele blundered upon the truth. In style, in 
wit, and in politeness, Addison maintained his superiority, 
though the Old Whig is by no means one of his happiest 20 
performances. 

7 At first, both the anonymous opponents observed the 
laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot 
himself as to throw an odious imputation on the morals 
of the chiefs of the administration. Addison replied 25 
with severity, but, in our opinion, with less severity than 
was due to so grave an offense against morality and 
decorum; nor did he, in his just anger, forget for a 
moment the laws of good taste and good breeding. 
One calumny which has been often repeated, and nevei 3° 
yet contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted 
in the f Biographia Britannica ' that Addison designated 
Steele as "little Dicky." This assertion was repeated 
by Johnson, who had never seen the Old U •;. and was 



94 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 

therefore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss 
Aikin, who has seen the Old Whig, and for whom there- 
fore there is less excuse. Now, it is true that the words 
" little Dicky" occur in the Old Whig, and that Steele's 
5 name was Richard. It is equally true that the words 
"little Isaac" occur in the 'Duenna,' and that Newton's 
name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Addi- 
son's little Dicky had no more to do with Steele than 
Sheridan's little Isaac with Newton. If we apply the 

io words " little Dicky " to Steele, we deprive a very lively 
and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all 
its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry 
Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of great 
humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popu- 

15 lar part, in Dryden's * Spanish Friar.' 

GThe merited reproof which Steele had received, though 
softened by some kind and courteous expressions, galled 
him bitterly. He replied with little force and great 
acrimony ; but no rejoinder appeared. Addison was fast 
20 hastening to his grave ; and had, we may well suppose, 
little disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. 
His complaint had terminated in dropsy. He bore up 
long and manfully. But at length he abandoned all 
hope, dismissed his physicians, and calmly prepared him- 
25 self to die. 
. I His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and dedi- 
^ cated them a very few days before his death to Craggs, 
in a letter written with the sweet and graceful eloquence 
of a Saturday's Spectator. In this, his last composition, 
3° he alluded to his approaching end in words so manly, so 
cheerful, and so tender that it is difficult to read them 
without tears. At the same time he earnestly recom- 
mended the interests of Tickell to the care of Craggs. 
'Within a few hours of the lime at which this dedica- 



m \ 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 95 

tion was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then 
living by his wits about town, to come to Holland House. 
Gay went, and was received with great kindness. To 
his amazement his forgiveness was implored by the dying 
man. Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of 5 
mankind, could not imagine what he had to forgive. 
There was, however, some wrong, the remembrance of 
which weighed on Addison's mind, and which he declared 
himself anxious to repair. He was in a state of extreme 
exhaustion ; and the parting was doubtless a friendly one 10 
on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to serve 
him had been in agitation at Court, and had been frus- 
trated by Addison's influence. Nor is this improbable. 
Gay had paid assiduous court to the royal family. But 
in the Queen's days he had been the eulogist of Boling- 15 
broke, and was still connected with many Tories. It is 
not strange that Addison, while heated by conflict, should 
have thought himself justified in obstructing the prefer- 
ment of one whom he might regard as a political enemy. 
Neither is it strange that, when reviewing his whole life, 20 
and earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, he should 
think that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous part 
in using his power against a distressed man of letters, 
who was as harmless and as helpless as a child. 
fj *k One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. It 25 
appears that Addison, on his death bed, called himself to 
a strict account, and was not at ease till he had asked 
pardon for an injury which it was not even suspected 
that he had committed, — for an injury which would have 
caused disquiet only to a very tender conscience. Is it 3° 
not then reasonable to infer that, if he had really been 
guilty of forming a base conspiracy against the fame and 
fortunes of a rival, he would have expressed some re- 
morse for so serious a crime? But it is unnecessary to 



96 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 



t 



|W 



multiply arguments and evidence for the defense when 
there is neither argument nor evidence for the accusation. 
The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. 
His interview with his son-in-law is universally known. 
5 " See," he said, " how a Christian can die." The piety 
of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful charac- 
ter. The feeling which predominates in all his devo- 
tional writings is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise 
and all-powerful friend who had watched over his cradle 

io with more than maternal tenderness ; who had listened 
to his cries before they could form themselves in prayer; 
who had preserved his youth from the snares of vice ; 
who had made his cup run over with worldly bless- 
ings ; who had doubled the value of those blessings by 

15 bestowing a thankful heart to enjoy them, and dear 
friends to partake them ; who had rebuked the waves of 
the Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the 
Campagna, and had restrained the avalanches of Mont 
Cenis. Of the Psalms, his favorite was that which repre- 

20 sents the Ruler of all things under the endearing image 
of a shepherd, whose crook guides the flock safe, through 
gloomy and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and 
rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he as- 
cribed all the happiness of his life he relied in the hour 

25 of death with the love which casteth out fear. He died 
on the 17H1 of June, 17 19. He had just entered on his 
^forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and 
was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. The 
choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, one of 
those Tories who had loved and honored the most accom- 
plished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and led the proces- 
sion by torchlight, round the shrine of Saint Edward and 
the graves of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel of Henry 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON 97 

the Seventh. On the north side of that chapel, in the 
vault of the House of Albemarle, the coffin of Addison 
lies next to the coffin of Montagu. Yet a few months, 
and the same mourners passed again along the same 
aisle. The same sad anthem was again chanted. The 5 
same vault was again opened ; and the coffin of Craggs 
was placed close to the coffin of Addison. 
^ Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison ; 
but one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his 
friend in an elegy which would do honor to the greatest 10 
name in our literature, and which unites the energy and 
magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of 
Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed to a superb edi- 
tion of Addison's works, which was published, in 172 1, 
by subscription. The names of the subscribers proved 15 
how widely his fame had been spread. That his country- 
men should be eager to possess his writings, even in a 
costly form, is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that, 
though English literature was then little studied on the 
continent, Spanish grandees, Italian prelates, marshals 20 
of France, should be found in the list. Among the most 
remarkable names are those of the Queen of Sweden, of 
Prince Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the 
Dukes of Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of the Doge of 
Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. 25 
We ought to add that this edition, though eminently 
beautiful, is in some important points defective ; nor, 
indeed, do we yet possess a complete collection of Addi- 
son's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow 3 
nor any of his powerful and attached Mends should 
have thought of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed 
with his name, on the walls of the Abbey. It was not 
till three generations had laughed and wept over his 



98 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 

pages that the omission was supplied by the public ven- 
eration. At length, in our own time, his image, skillfully 
graven, appeared in the Poet's Corner. It represents 
him, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing gown 
5 and freed from his wig, stepping from his parlor at 
Chelsea into his trim little garden, with the account of 
the Everlasting Club or the Loves of Hilpa and Shalum, 
just finished for the next day's Spectator, in his hand. 
Such a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied 

10 statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of 
pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter of 
life and manners. It was due, above all, to the great 
satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without 
abusing it; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a 

15 great social reform; and who reconciled wit and virtue, 
after a long and disastrous separation, during which 
wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by 
fanaticism. 



NOTES. 



July, 1843. This was the date of the first publication of the Essay, 
which was originally a contribution to the Edinburgh Review under the 
form of a notice of The Life of Joseph Addison, by Lucy Aikin. 

1 12. The courteous knight. Rogero, one of the characters in Ari- 
osto's poetical romance, Orlando Furioso. Bradamante was a maiden 
knight, and Rogero would not use against her his customary weapon, 
the sword Balisarda, which was endowed with magic power. 

2 4. The Laputan flapper. See Gulliver's Travels, Part III. Chap. 2. 
2 6. In a letter to Napier, then editor of the Edinburgh Review, 

written during the preparation of this Essay, Macaulay had said : " I 
am truly vexed to find Miss Aikin's book so very bad that it is impos- 
sible for us, with due regard to our own character, to praise it. All that 
I can do is to speak civilly of her writings generally, and to express 
regret that she should have been nodding. . . . Yet it goes much 
against my feelings to censure any woman, even with the greatest 
lenity. ... I shall not again undertake to review any lady's book till 
I know how it is executed." 

2 14. Miss Aikin had won considerable literary reputation by the 
publication of Memoirs of the Courts of Elizabeth, James I., and 
Charles I. 

2 16. Congreve (1670-17 29) and Prior (1664-172 1 ). Contemporaries 
of Addison ; the first a brilliant and popular dramatist, the second a 
poet and satirist. 

2 17. Theobald's. In Elizabeth's time the residence of her minister 
Cecil (Lord Burleigh). 

2 is. Steenkirks. At the battle of Steenkirk, in 1692, the French 
army, under Luxemburg, was surprised and nearly defeated by the 
English and allied forces under William III. Many of the French 
noblemen, roused from their sleep by the sudden attack, harried to 
their places with disordered dress, and distinguished themselves by 
their bravery where the fight was hottest, until William was finally 



100 XOTES. 

beaten back. The battle gave its name to a new fashion of arranging 
with studied negligence the rich lace neckcloths then in vogue, in imita- 
tion of their appearance on the battlefield. 

Flowing periwigs, worn by all men of fashion at this time, and often 
very expensive. It is said that Steele, who lived on a scale of impecu- 
nious extravagance, could never take the air without a wig Worth fifty 
guineas. 

2 19. Hampton. A royal palace on the Thames, above London. 

2 33. Here Macaulay enters upon the real subject of his essay, for 
which the nominal review of Miss Aikin's book serves only as an excuse. 
Such further comment upon her work as he wished to make appeared 
in footnotes in the Review, and was omitted altogether from the sub- 
sequent republications. 

3 11. Parnell, Rev. Thomas, was one of the minor poets and 
critics of Queen Anne's reign. He contributed somewhat to the 
Spectator, and was on intimate terms with Pope and Swift. 

3 12. Blair, Rev. Hugh, D.D., for many years Professor of Rhetoric 
and Belles-lettres at Edinburgh University. He was a friend of Samuel 
Johnson, and popular in his own day as an essayist and sermon writer. 

A tragedy not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. Addison's 
Cato was, like Samuel Johnson's Irene, declamatory, undramatic, and in 
itself uninteresting ; but unlike the latter tragedy, which was practically 
a failure, Addison's play achieved at the time of its production an 
extraordinary success. For the causes of this, and for Macaulay 's criti- 
cism of the play itself, see the present Essay, pp. 67-70. 

3 22. Button's, a coffee-house patronized by Addison and his friends. 

Public coffee-houses first appeared in London during the reign of Charles 
II., and in Queen Anne's time were an important element in the life of the 
town. They were frequented as places for social intercourse and as centers 
of news and gossip. Each coffee-house had its habitual patrons, drawn 
together by similarity of tastes or occupations. At one would be found the 
dandies of the day, at another the wits or scholars; here the clergymen, 
there the merchants and brokers. In this way they became virtually clubs. 
Especially was this true when, as at Button's, the reputation of the place 
was made by the custom of some literary celebrity or coterie. 

4 15. The Episcopal form of service was displaced under Cromwell 
by the Presbyterian, and its public use was forbidden. 

4 19. Dunkirk, on the Straits of Dover, had been won for England 
by Cromwell, and its possession was considered of great importance for 
naval defense from France. Its sale by Charles II., who was always in 
need of money, roused great indignation in England. 



NOTES. 101 

4 22. Charles II. married the Portuguese princess Catharine in 1662. 

5 5. The Convocation (or assembly of the clergy) of 1689 was 
summoned by King William to consider propositions intended to bring 
the dissenters back into the Established Church. Tillotson, afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury, was the leader of the movement. The High 
Church party held control, and the propositions were defeated. 

5 11. The Charterhouse, an old and famous London school. In 
Addison's time it held with Westminster the first place among the 
schools of England, as Rugby, Eton, and Harrow do to-day. 

5 14-16. Johnson is the authority for the barring out; see his Essay 
on Addison. The second tradition is related in Addisoniana, a collec- 
tion of anecdotes with regard to Addison, as a story which had been 
handed down in his native town. 

6 3. James II., in his effort to force the Roman Catholic faith upon 
England, struck at the Universities as the strongholds and nurseries of 
the Established Church. If education were open only to Catholics, the 
supply of Protestant clergymen would be cut off. Accordingly he 
attempted to force the fellows of Magdalen College to elect a Roman 
Catholic, Farmer, as their President. They refused, and elected instead 
Hough, one of their own number. A commission was then sent to 
Oxford by the King to enforce compliance with the royal will, as 
recounted by Macaulay in the text. 

Hi$ Chancellor, Jeffreys. He had received the office as a reward for 
his work in the Bloody Assizes (see Gardiner's Students' History of 
England, p. 637 ; Green's History of the English People, Vol. IV. 
p. 9). The Lord High Chancellor was originally supposed to be the 
confidential adviser of the King, and hence is sometimes called ' The 
keeper of the King's conscience.' He is keeper of the Great Seal, the 
presiding officer of the House of Lords, a member of the cabinet, and 
supreme judge of the Court of Chancery. 

6 7. In 1688 James ordered the English clergy to read before their 
congregations a Declaration of Indulgence to Catholics. The Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and six bishops signed a protest against this 
illegal action, and for this were brought to trial by the King (see Green, 
IV. 23; Gardiner, p. 642). 

6 10. The fellows of each college at Cambridge and Oxford consti- 
tute, with their President, the governing body of their foundation or 
college. They are not necessarily resident, and may hold their fellow- 
ships for many years. Addison, for example, was elected in 100S to 
a fellowship which he continued to hold until 1711, though he left 
Oxford in [699. 



102 NOTES. 

6 28. The demies as well as the fellows had been expelled by the 
Commission. The term * demi ' is peculiar to Magdalen College. It 
denotes a holder of an undergraduate scholarship. 

7 20. Buchanan, George (1506-1582), a great scholar and historian, 
tutor for a time to both Mary Queen of Scots and her son James I of 
England. His Latin verses are of great excellence. 

7 30-34. This must not be taken too literally. The accomplish- 
ments which Macaulay ascribes to the ordinary schoolboy are proverbial. 
Mr. Courthope says : " His [Addison's] acquaintance with the Greek 
poets, if cursory, was wide and intelligent ; he was sufficiently master of 
the language thoroughly to understand the spirit of what he read. . . . 
The Eton or Rugby boy who, in these days, with a normal appetite for 
cricket and football, acquired an equal knowledge of Greek literature, 
would certainly be somewhat of a prodigy " (Addison in English Me?i 
of Letters). 

8 23. Addison traveled abroad from 1699 to l 7°h anc * spent over a 
year in Italy. In 1705 he published his Remarks o?i the Several Parts 
of Italy. 

9 5. Commentaries, Letters to Atticus. Who are the authors ? 

9 8. Lucan (38-65 A.D.), the author of the epic poem Rharsalia, was 
one of the chief Roman poets of the ' silver age ' in Latin literature. 

9 15. The Dialogues npo7i the Usefulness of Ancient Medals was 
begun while Addison was abroad, but first appeared in print after his 
death, in the edition of his works published by Tick ell in 1721. 

9 28. The Essay, Of the Christian Religion, occupied Addison's 
attention at intervals during the last five years of his life, but was left 
unfinished. It was included in Tickell's edition just referred to. 

10 1. The Cock Lane ghost. In 1772 a house in Cock Lane, Stock- 
well, near London, was reported to be haunted by a ghost which pro- 
duced strange rappings. It was for a time the talk of London, but was 
found at last to be a hoax. 

10 2. Ireland's Vortigern. William Henry Ireland produced in 
1795, at tne a S e °f seventeen, a series of documents relating to Shakes- 
peare which he pretended to have discovered, — private letters, the- 
atrical memoranda, annotated books, and at last a complete play, 
Vortigern, which was actually purchased by Sheridan and acted at the 
Drury Lane Theater. Many eminent men of letters were at first imposed 
upon, but the play failed on its first performance, and Ireland was forced 
to confess the forgeries. 

The Thundering Legion. There is a tradition that in the army of 
Marcus A melius was a legion composed entirely of Christians, and that 



NOTES. 103 

once, when shut in a defile by the Marcomanni, a violent thunderstorm 
arose in answer to their prayers, under cover of which they attacked 
and defeated their enemies. 

10 5. According to the tradition, Abgarus, toparch of Edessa, was 
sick of an incurable disease. Hearing of Christ's miraculous cures, he 
wrote professing belief, and asking the Saviour to come and heal him. 
Jesus, with his own hand, wrote in reply that when he had done the 
command of his Father he must return to Him, but he would send one 
of his disciples, Thaddeus, to heal Abgarus's disease and show him the 
way of life. 

10 16. Boyle, Charles (i 676-1 731), afterwards third Earl of Orrery, 
put forth in 1695, while an undergraduate at Oxford, an edition of the 
Epistles of Ehalaris, which were then supposed to date from the sixth 
century B.C. He was largely assisted in his work by Atterbury and 
other Oxford colleagues. The unscholarly character of the book was 
exposed by Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742), the foremost English 
scholar of his time, who published, two years later, his famous Disser- 
tation on the Epistles of Phalaris, proving that the Epistles were forgeries 
of the second century a.d. The controversy attracted wide attention, 
and called forth Swift's Battle of the Books. 

10 17. Blackmore, Sir Richard (d. 1729), court physician to King 
William, and a very voluminous writer, both in prose and poetry. He 
was the author, among other things, of six ponderous epics, many medi- 
cal treatises, two volumes of essays, and a periodical patterned after the 
Spectator. Addison praised his Creation in the latter periodical ; but 
he was unsparingly ridiculed by most of the literary men of his time, 
until his name became a synonym for dullness. 

10 25. The important place assigned, in the English schools, to the 
writing of Latin verse accounts for the fact that a false quantity is, in 
that country, regarded almost as a disgrace and the mark of an insuffi- 
cient education. Two generations ago, when Latin quotations were 
more commonly introduced into parliamentary speeches than now, the 
mispronunciation of a Latin word would make the unlucky blunderer 
the laughing-stock of the House of Commons. 

10 31. See note on 10 16. 

11 8. See same note. 

11 15. Thousands of breakfast-tables. Addison's daily paper, the 
spectator, was a popular accompaniment of breakfast among fashionable 

Londoners. 

12 1. Drury Lane, through most of the seventeenth centur) an 
aristocratic residence street, was in Addison's time given up to that life 



104 NOTES. 

of the town which centered in the Queen Anne coffee-houses and 
theaters. The Royal, or Drury Lane Theater, was (and is) at the corner 
of Drury Lane and Russell Street, on which were both Button's and 
Will's, and was, on the whole, the leading theater of the time. 

12 10. Congreve. See note on 2 16. 

12 n. Charles Montagu (i 661-17 15), who became Lord Halifax in 
1699, was a statesman of extraordinary ability, particularly as a financier. 
The national debt and the Bank of England both date from his time, 
and it was due to his success in founding the latter that he was made 
Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1694. His subsequent fall from power 
and impeachment are mentioned by Macaulay on p. 29. 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a cabinet officer, one of whose 
duties is to present to parliament the statement of taxation proposed for 
the ensuing year. In this respect his position is similar to that of our 
Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He must not be con- 
fused with the Lord Chancellor, with regard to whom see note on 6 3. 

12 20, 21. Newdigate prize, Seatonian prize. These are prizes for 
English verse, offered annually at Oxford and Cambridge respectively. 

Heroic couplet. Define this verse-measure. 

In this passage Macaulay does scant justice to the real virtues of the dis- 
tinct variety of rimed couplet which Pope perfected ; and he seems not to rec- 
ognize the existence of any other variety at all. Pope, with his genius for 
saying things cleverly, with his keen wit and sparkling fancy and rhetorical 
power, developed a corresponding poetic style — balanced, emphatic, polished, 
and pointed. The decasyllabic couplet of Chaucer or Keats, on the other 
hand, simpler, more varied, and more flowing, is an altogether different verse- 
form — far more suitable for straightforward narrative and for delicate poetic 
feeling, though it would not have served Pope's purpose at all. Compare 
with one another and with the passages in the text the three following pas- 
sages, noting carefully the differences in content, style, and versification, and 
the illustrations of what has just been said : — 

O mercy, deare father, quod this maid. 
And with that word she both her armes laid 
About his neck, as she was wont to do. 
(The teares brast out of her eyen two,) 
And said, O goode father, shall I die ? 
Is there no grace ? is there no remedy ? 

Chat UictoSs Tale (Appius and Virginia). 

This day, black omens threat the brightest fair 
That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care ; 
Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight ; 
But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night. 



NOTES. 105 

Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, 
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw ; 
Or stain her honor or her new brocade ; 
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade. 

Pope, Rape of the Lock. 

Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop 
From low-hung branches ; little space they stop, 
But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek ; 
Then off at once, as in a wanton freak ; 
Or perhaps, to show their black and golden wings, 
Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. 

Keats, '/ stood tiptoe upon a little hill.'' 

13 10. Hoole, John (1727-1803), translated from the Italian into 
English heroic couplets Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata and Ariosto's 
Orlando Furioso. 

13 14-16. This refers to an invention of the distinguished civil 
engineer and architect, Sir Marc Isambard Brunei (1 769-1849), which 
substituted machinery for hand labor in the manufacture of ships' blocks. 
It was employed in the government dockyards, at an immense economy 
of labor and money. 

14 14, 15. Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, minor English poets a 
few years older than Addison. 

14 23. Addison furnished also arguments to most of the books of the 
ALneid. His authorship of both these and the preface was unknown at 
the time. 

14 27. Dryden's skill in compliment was unrivaled in an age of 
adulation. 

y 15 9. Notice the sudden change in subject in the midst of the paia- 
* graph. We hear no more about Addison and his calling until the 
second paragraph following. 

15 17. In Samuel Johnson's Rasselas. 

16 4. Lord Chancellor. See note on 6 3. 

Somers, John ([652-1716) had taken a leading part in bringing 
William III. to the throne. He became William's mos1 trusted adviser, 
and rose, through successive steps of legal preferment, to the high office 
of Lord Chancellor, which he reached in 1697. As a parliamentary 
orator he held with Montagu the foremost place 

17 12. The peace of Ryswick, concluded in [697, marked only a 
temporary pause in tin- struggle of the English and Dutch and theii 

allies against the ambitious plans of I rOuis XIV, The Latter had 

hitherto supported the claims of Janus 11. to the English throm 



106 NOTES. 

now recognized William as king, and Anne as his successor. But when, 
in 1700, he accepted the crown of Spain for his grandson, in defiance 
of his agreement on that point made with Great Britain and Holland, 
he again took up the cause of the Stuarts, and, on the death of James 
II. in the following year, recognized the Pretender as king of England. 

18 6. Made a rich man by his pension. It must not be forgotten 
that money was worth, roughly speaking, three times as much then as 
now. 

18 17. Addison was elected a member of the celebrated Kit-Cat Club 
soon after his return to England in 1703. Montagu (by that time Lord 
Halifax) and Somers were members of the club, which included all the 
great leaders of the Whig party and their most valuable literary allies. 
It was professedly a club of wits, but exerted an important influence in 
politics. It was said to have taken its name from one Christopher 
Cat, famous for his delectable mutton pies. 

One of the rules of the club was that each member should, on his 
admission, name some lady as his ' toast,' and write some verses in her 
praise. Addison's lines, engraved on his toasting glass, were as follows : — 

While haughty Gallia's dames, that spread 
O'er their pale cheeks an artful red, 
Beheld this beauteous stranger there, 
In native charms divinely fair; 
Confusion in their looks they showed, 
And with unborrowed blushes glowed. 

The same causes which gave their popularity to coffee-houses, already 
remarked upon, under Queen Anne, promoted the growth of clubs. Politics 
and the life of the town almost monopolized the attention of all men of 
social station. The coffee-house furnished the nucleus ; only a permanent 
organization was needed to transform its habitual frequenters into a full- 
fledged club. Accordingly we find clubs of every kind, some of which 
Addison satirized in the Spectator, No. 9. 

18 26. Racine, Jean (1 639-1 699), one of the greatest of French 
dramatic poets. The ■ sacred dramas ' to which Macaulay alludes 
{Esther and Athalic) were written about 1690. 

18 28. Dacier (1 651-17 22), a distinguished French scholar, an- 
nounced to Louis in 1685 his conversion to Catholicism, and was re- 
warded with a pension. It is illustrative of the veneration for the classics 
which then obtained, that the new convert should have sought in the 
writings of Plato for confirmation of the doctrines contained in the 
Athanasian creed, which, as a Catholic, he was bound to accept as 
authoritative. 



NOTES. 107 

19 8. Joseph Spence (i 699-1 768), an English clergyman, scholar, 
and critic, whose Anecdotes are full of information concerning the liter- 
ary men of his time. 

19 17. Guardian, a daily paper published by Steele in 17 13 after the 
discontinuance of the Spectator. Addison was a frequent contributor 
to it. 

19 24. Bishop Hough. See note on 6 3. 

19 25,26. Malebranche (1638-17 15) and Boileau (1636-1711), 
eminent, the first as a philosopher, the second as a man of letters. 

19 28. Hobbes, Thomas (1 588-1679), a distinguished English politi- 
cal philosopher, whose most famous work, the Leviathan, argued for 
absolutism as the necessary basis of society. 

20 1. The French Academy, originally a private society, was in 1635 
converted by Richelieu into a government organization, composed of 
eminent scholars and writers, and charged with the function of protect- 
ing the purity of the language and pronouncing judgment on questions 
of literary criticism. 

20 11. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the most famous of English 
portrait painters. He was one of the foremost figures in the society of 
his time, and a member of the celebrated Literary Club, which included 
among its members Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, and Burke. 

Mrs. Thrale, the wife of a wealthy London brewer. Her tastes were 
literary, and she was ambitious to cultivate the acquaintance of literary 
people. After meeting Dr. Johnson, then recognized as the foremost 
conversationalist and man of letters of his time, she asked him to her 
house at Streatham, in the suburbs of London, where she and her hus- 
band made him so comfortable that it soon became almost his home. 

20 15. Absalom and Achitophel. Who is the author of this poem ? 

21 24, 25. Erasmus (1466-1536), the great Dutch scholar who for a 
time held the chair of Greek at Cambridge, England, and Fracastorius 
( 1 483-1 533), a learned Italian physician and poet, both wrote mainly in 
Latin. 

21 25. Robertson, Dr. William (1 721-1793), a Scotch minister, who 
published, in 1759, a history of Scotland, and at once took rank as ,i 
leading historian. The full title of his last work is, A Disquisition 
Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India. 

21 31. Gray, Thomas (17 16-1771), author of what famous English 

poem ? He published Latin verses while an undergraduate at Cambridge. 

21 39. Vincent Bourne (1695-1747) was for main years .1 master at 
Westminster School. His only publication was a small volume of 
very graceful Latin poems. 



10S NOTES. 

22 1-5. Ne croyez, etc. " But do not think from this that I wish to 
find fault with the Latin verses of one of your distinguished academicians 
which you sent me. I found them very beautiful, and worthy of Vida 
and Sannazaro, but not of Horace and Virgil." 

Vida (i48o(?)-i566) and Sannazaro (i 458-1 530) were two Italians 
who wrote Latin poetry, — the former Be Arte Poetica, patterned after 
Horace's Ars Poetica, the latter an epic, De Partit Virginis, which won 
him the name of the " Christian Virgil." 

23 11. See note on 17 12. This bequest of the Spanish throne to a 
French prince marks the beginning of the War of the Spanish Suc- 
cession, in which the English, Dutch, Austrians, and a part of the 
German states were leagued against France and Spain. With the 
power of these two countries in the hands of one family, perhaps of one 
sovereign, no state in Europe was strong enough to defend itself. 
•• There are no longer any Pyrenees," Louis had said to his grandson 
setting out for Spain. It was to restore the Pyrenees that the war was 
undertaken. 

24 jt. Book of Gold. In 1528, under the leadership of Andrea 
Doria, Genoa threw off the French yoke and became an independent 
republic. A list of her most important citizens was then made out, and 
these were called the Nobles of the Golden Book. This book was 
burned in a popular outbreak in 1797. 

24 22. House of Doria. " There is one room in the first {i.e. the 
Duke of Doria's Palace) that is hung with tapestry, in which are 
wrought the figures of the great persons that the family has produced ; 
as perhaps there is no family in Europe that can show a longer line of 
heroes that have still acted for the good of their country." (Addison's 
Remarks on Italy.) 

24 24. Mediaeval architecture was not highly appreciated in Addi- 
son's time. The very use of the word ' Gothic ' implied disparagement ; 
it signified something irregular and barbaric. Classic symmetry and 
severity formed the ideal of architecture, and a profusion of ornament 
was sure to be censured as in bad taste. 

25 11. The evidence regarding the time when Addison began Cato 
is at first sight conflicting. Colley Cibber says that he read the first 
four acts of the play in 1703, and that Steele at that time said it had 
been " the amusement of Addison's leisure hours in Italy." Tonson 
also says that the first four acts were written abroad. On the other 
hand, Tickell, in the preface to his edition of Addison's works, says : 
" He took up a design of writing upon this subject when he was at the 
University, and even attempted something in it there, though not a 



NOTES. 109 

line as it now stands." Dr. Young even says that Addison at that 
time sent his play of Cato to Dryden for criticism, and that the latter 
returned it with the opinion that it would not succeed on the stage. 
But these accounts are after all not at all irreconcilable. Tickell was 
certainly in a position to know what he was talking about. He had 
been for a number of years one of Addison's nearest friends, and was 
his literary executor. We must reject his testimony in toto to believe 
with Macaulay that the Venetian opera " suggested to him [Addison] 
the thought of bringing Cato on the English stage." On the other 
hand, with the subject already in mind Addison would naturally find 
such a performance as he describes full of hints, and, writing with 
maturer powers, the resulting production might easily have little more 
than the title in common with his academic tragedy, so that his friends 
would be quite right in speaking of the first four acts of Cato as 
written in Italy. 

26 19. Paestum. A city in Lucania, about forty miles south from 
Naples, originally settled by Greek colonists, and famous for a wonder- 
ful group of three Doric temples, one of them the most complete Greek 
temple now existing. 

26 24. Salvator. Salvator Rosa (161 5-1673), a Neapolitan whose 
romantic feeling and use of landscape mark a turning-point in the 
history of art. 

26 25. Vico (1668-1744), another son of Naples, who led the w 
toward a sound philosophy of history, and modern methods and results 
in the science of society. When Addison was in Italy Vico was Pro- 
fessor of Rhetoric in the University of Naples. 

26 26. In Yucatan are crumbling ruins which were formerly sup- 
posed to be the remains of a prehistoric civilization, but which are now 
known to be the sites of huge communal villages of Indians, similar to 
the cities found in Mexico by the Spaniards, and to the Pueblo towns of 
New Mexico. (See Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. I. pp. 131- 1 37 .) 

26 34. Philip the Fifth, the grandson of Louis XIV. oi France, the 
circumstances of whose accession to the throne of France were narrated 
on p. 23. 

27 :l The Italian dependencies of the Spanish crown. These 
were the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdoms of Sardinia and the Two 

Sieilies. The latter included the southern part of the Italian penie 
as well as the island of Sicily. 

27 ia. See Virgil's Mneid, VI. 233. 

27 17. Fabled promontory of Circe. See ./•>.■;./, VII. 10. 

27 96. In the same ode alluded to on ?A II. 



110 NOTES. 

27 34. Forgot his prejudices. Not quite. Addison's comment is 
extremely significant. " There is nothing in this city so extraordinary 
as the cathedral, which a man may view with pleasure after he has seen 
St. Peter's, though it is quite of another make, and can only be looked 
up07i as one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture. When a man 
sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at 
in these barbarous buildings, one ca?i?iot but fancy to himself what viiracles 
of architecture they would have left us had they beeii o?ily instructed in 
the right way. . . . One would wonder to see the vast labor that has 
been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden with 
ornaments ; the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, 
with a multitude of little pillars retiring one behind another ; the great 
columns are finely engraven with fruits and foliage ; . . . and the front 
covered with such a variety of figures, and overrun with so many little 
mazes and labyrinths of sculpture, that nothing in the world can make 
a prettier show to those w ho prefer false beauties and affected ornaments to 
a noble and majestic simplicity.^ (Remarks en Italy.) 

28 19-26. These were the opening movements of the War of the 
Spanish Succession. Prince Eugene was commander of the Austrian 
army ; Catinat, of the French army in northern Italy. The Duke of 
Savoy at first sided with Louis, but went over to the allies in 1703. The 
appointment of the Earl of Manchester as Ambassador to France was 
mentioned on p. 18. 

29 15. Parnell. See note on 3 11. 
Prior. See note on 2 16. 

29 20. Impeached by the House of Commons. William had tried 
to prevent the War of the Spanish Succession by making a secret treaty 
with France, stipulating that on the death of Charles II., King of Spain, 
that country should be divided among the rival claimants. The treaty, 
when it became known in England, proved very unpopular, and resulted 
in the impeachment of the Whig ministers in 1701. 

30 3. Death of William the Third. In March, 1702 . 

30 7. Deprived of the seals, i.e. his resignation was demanded. 
Tli ere are now in the English cabinet five Secretaries of State, but at 
Queen Anne's accession only two. The seals constituted their emblem 
of office. Two other cabinet officers are custodians of seals, the Lord 
Chancellor of the Great Seal and the Lord Privy Seal of the Privy Seal. 

30 9. The Privy Council. Most of the duties formerly attaching to 
this body have now been assumed by the cabinet, and the rest are 
mainly discharged by two or three important standing committees, so 
that the Privy Council does not now assemble except for routine and 



NOTES. Ill 

purely formal business. The Council was originally a body of represent- 
ative men selected by the sovereign to act as advisers of the crown in 
all important affairs of state, and the monarch could not constitutionally 
act unless so advised. It was an extraordinary act of royal disfavor to 
exclude from the Council Somers and Halifax, who by virtue of their 
position as leaders of the dominant party in the preceding Parliament 
were entitled to sit in it. 

30 13. He became tutor, etc. This statement, the authority for 
which is a sarcastic fling of Swift's, is probably incorrect. A little 
later, after the death of Addison's father, he was in correspondence with 
the Duke of Somerset with reference to becoming tutor to his son ; 
but the remuneration offered was not satisfactory, and the plan fell 
through. 

30 23. The eight northern provinces of the Netherlands threw off 
the Spanish yoke and in 1579 proclaimed the "Union of Utrecht," 
thus forming the United Provinces, now the Kingdom of Holland. 
The southern provinces, comprising what is now Belgium, were still 
held by Spain as the Spanish Netherlands. 

31 4. The prerogative, the rights of the crown as against those 
of Parliament. 

The Church, the Established (Episcopal) Church. 

These were the two main issues in English politics at the time. The 
Whigs opposed the doctrine of divine right and wished to limit the power of 
the sovereign ; and as the dissenters were mainly Whigs, the party naturally 
favored religious toleration. The Tories, on the other hand, were called 
indifferently the Church party or the country party, since their party was 
loyally and unwaveringly supported by the clergy and the country gentlemen. 
As the latter derived their incomes from the rents of their land, the Tories 
favored a system of taxation which should relieve land of the burden and 
lay it as far as possible upon trade, which centered in the cities and ^as 
favored by the Whigs. Further, since the scruples of the Tories against 
any attack on the power of the throne had made it difficult for them to sup- 
port William against James II. and since the Tories were an intensely 
English party, hated all foreigners, and wished to have as little as possible 
to do with foreign alliances and European wars, it was not strange that 
William's war policy had to look for its champions to the Whigs, and that 
the Tories fiercely opposed it. 

31 6, 7. Godolphin, Marlborough. These were the two leaders and 
directors of English politics from the accession of Anne to the overturn 
of parties in the elections of 1710. The Marl of Godolphin (1635(F)- 
1712) was a skillful financier and a cautious and conservative politician, 



112 NOTES. 

and as Lord High Treasurer and practically Prime Minister managed 
affairs at home and raised the funds for the military operations of 
Marlborough on the Continent. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough 
(i 650(F)- 1 722), was one of the great captains of the world. Under his 
leadership the splendid armies and experienced generals of the French 
were again and again defeated, their country devastated, and the 
empire of the proud old Louis brought to the verge of dismemberment. 
Marlborough's character was, however, stained by avarice and treachery. 
He was greatly assisted by his wife, who possessed unbounded influence 
over Anne. 

31 13. Funded debt. The national debt began under King 
William. It was a Whig measure, and was bitterly opposed by the 
Tories, since it gave the Whig capitalists a chance for a good invest- 
ment, while the country had to meet the interest charge. 

32 2. This comparison for the sake of clearness has become inef- 
fective with the lapse of time ; it is now necessary to explain the 
explanation. In 1826 important measures of reform were before the 
country. The Tory party was in power, but on the question of the need 
of reform Tory opinion was hopelessly divided. Canning and Lord 
Kldon, both members of the cabinet, represent the opposing wings, 
the first a moderate reformer, the second an intense anti-reformer. 
The Whigs stood ready to assist Canning, and after he became Prime 
Minister in the following year some of them entered his cabinet. 

32 17. Blenheim, in Bavaria, the scene of one of Marlborough's 
greatest victories, won in 1704. Pie had marched 400 miles from his 
base of operations in Holland, to crush a French army which was mov- 
ing against the Austrians. The battle changed the entire European 
situation, and threw France on the defensive. 

32 22. The Imperial throne, occupied by Leopold, Archduke of 
Austria. 

32 23. The Act of Settlement. This act of Parliament decreed 
that on the death of Anne without issue the crown should pass to the 
House of Hanover. This was, of course, an exclusion of the Stuarts, 
whom Louis had recognized as the heirs (see note on 17 12), and whom 
the French, if victorious, would probably attempt to restore. 

32 32. Newmarket, the great English race-course. 

33 16 ff. This anecdote is on the authority of Budgell, in his Life 
of Lord Orrery, and is, as Leslie Stephen remarks, "reported with 
suspicious fullness." 

34 16. The similitude of the angel. This is the best passage in 
the poem, and the one oftenest quoted. It is as follows : — 



NOTES. 113 

So when an angel by divine command 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed, 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. 

34 17. Commissionership. He was made Commissioner of Appeals 
in the Excise, succeeding the philosopher Locke in the office. 

35 28. Lifeguardsman. The Lifeguards are the two senior regi- 
ments of the sovereign's mounted bodyguard, and are all at least six 
feet tall. 

35 31. Mamelukes, originally slaves purchased by the Sultan of 
Egypt and made into an army. They soon discovered their power, and 
in 1254 made one of their number Sultan. They were masters of 
Egypt until its conquest by the Turks in 1 517, and remained a power- 
ful military aristocracy until their perfidious massacre in the citadel of 
Cairo in 181 1. At the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1797 
the Mamelukes attacked him in the battle of the Pyramids, under the 
leadership of Mourad Bey, and were severely beaten. 

36 24. The Boyne, the river in Ireland which gave its name to the 
decisive victory gained upon its banks by William III. in 1690, when he 
defeated James II. and the French and Irish troops supporting him, and 
secured his own claim to the English throne. 

36 25. John Philips (1 676-1 709), one of the minor poets of the 
time. His poem on Blenheim was written after Addison's, and was 
produced by request of some of the Tory leaders as a kind of counter- 
blast to the Campaign. Notice his use of blank verse and imitation of 
Milton's style. 

37 18. Johnson, in his Life of Addison, had contended that the com- 
parison was not a true simile at all, and that it was too obvious to 
deserve much praise. " Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem 
that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both in 
the same manner. Marlborough 'teaches the battle to rage ' ; the angel 
'directs the storm': Marlborough is 'unmoved in peaceful thought'; 
the angel is ' calm and serene' : Marlborough stands ' unmoved amidst 
the shock of hosts'; the angel rides 'calm in the whirlwind. 1 The lines 
on Marlborough are just and noble; but the simile gives almost the 
same images a second time." 

Though Macaulay would not "dispute the general justice ol Johnson's 
remarks/' Mr. Courthope has not hesitated to do so. He defends Addison 

as follows: " It was Addison's intention to raise in the mind of tin- reader 



114 XOTES. 



the noblest possible idea of composure and design in the midst of confusion 
to do this he selected an angel as the minister of the divine purpose, and a 
storm as the symbol of fury and devestation. . . . Johnson has noticed the 
close similarity between the persons of Marlborough and the angel ; but he 
lias exaggerated the resemblance between the actions in which they are sever- 
ally engaged/' (Courthope's Addison in English Men of Letters^ 

38 14. Victor Amadeus, the Duke of Savoy mentioned on 28 22, and 
note. 

38 20. Empress Faustina (d. a.d. 175), wife of the Roman Emperor, 
Marcus Aurelius. Her life was scandalously immoral. 

39 12. Santa Croce, the church at Florence in which are buried, 
among other famous Florentines, Dante, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, 
and Galileo. 

39 14. An allusion to the celebrated passage in Dante's Inferno, 
Canto V. The affecting story of the lovers, Paolo and Francesca, is 
also the theme of Leigh Hunt's poem, Rimini. 

39 19. This is exaggerated praise. Filicaja's poetry is unequal, and 
is often vitiated by an artificial style. He lived 1 642-1 707. 

40 2. Rowe, Nicholas (1674-17 18), one of the not inconsiderable 
number of English Poet Laureates whose laurel has withered sadly with 
time. His best work was as a dramatic writer. 

40 18. Great Seal. See note on 30 7. The Great Seal is the seal 
of state. It is affixed to the writs which summon a new Parliament, as 
well as to treaties and similar documents. 

4 19. Somers and Halifax. See 30 8, and note on 30 9. 

40 24. Secretary of State. See note on 30 7. 

40 27. Charles, Earl of Sunderland (167 5-1722). He was person- 
ally very repugnant to Queen Anne, but he was Marlborough's son-in- 
law, and was forced upon her. He later became Prime Minister under 
George I., but was involved in the scandals connected with the South 
Sea Bubble, and disgraced in consequence. Tickell's edition of Addi- 
son's works was dedicated to him. 

40 30. Godolphin and Marlborough were still nominally Tories; but 
in the following year they formally declared themselves Whigs. Their 
secession left the leadership of the party to Robert Harley (1661-1724), 
who later became Earl of Oxford, and to Henry St. John (1678-17 51), 
subsequently raised to the peerage with the title of Viscount Bolingbroke. 

41 7. Prosecution of Sacheverell. This was not until 17 10. 
Sacheverell was a London clergyman, and a narrow and violent Tory. 
He accordingly preached a sermon reflecting on the government, and 
strongly upheld the extreme Tory doctrine that it was unlawful under 



. 



NOTES. 115 

any circumstances to oppose the monarch by force — a doctrine which, 
of course, impeached the title of William III. and Anne. This sermon 
was printed, and resulted in Sacheverell's impeachment. He was con- 
victed, but only a nominal penalty was imposed ; and the excitement 
caused by his trial contributed materially to the defeat of the Whigs in 
the elections of the same year, which resulted in the fall of Godolphin 
and the accession to power of Harley and St. John. 

41 12. Lord President of the Council. The presiding officer of the 
Privy Council is a member of cabinet. 

42 5. The censorship of the press ceased in 1693. 

42 13. Conduct of the Allies. This pamphlet, written by Swift in 
the interest of Plarley and the Tory party, proved a most effective cam- 
paign document. Swift himself said that it furnished all the Tory 
orators in Parliament with their arguments. It sought to show that 
English interests had been entirely sacrificed to those of the continen- 
tal allies in the War of the Spanish Succession, and so to win the 
nation to the Tory policy of an early peace. 

42 14. The Freeholder was a political paper published by Addison 
during the first half of the year 17 16. It appeared twice a week, and 
was written in the interest of the new King (George I.) and his ministry. 
See p. 87. 

43 5. Grub Street, once in a respectable residence quarter of London, 
had been left behind by the tide of fashion, even then setting strongly 
westward, and abandoned to cheap lodgings, not too high-priced for 
the very slender purses of the impecunious hack-writers who swarmed 
in it and desperately fought starvation with their pens. 

43 13. St. John. See note on 40 30. 

43 17. Swift, Jonathan (1 667-1 745), was originally a Whig, but 
went over to the Tories on their accession to power in 17 10. This was 
partly because as a clergyman of the Church of England he was more 
in sympathy with the Tories on church issues, and partly because the 
Tory leaders, especially Harley, made much of him and took him into 
their inner circle. His literary services to the party were of the 
first importance (see note on 42 13), and gave him great influence. 
He himself says that he could get office for everybody but himself. IK' 
wished a bishopric, but owing to the opposition of Anne was obliged to 
content himself with the Deanery of St. Patrick's in Dublin. He with 
drew thither in 17 14, and never afterward returned to England save 
once, in 1726, for a brief visit with Tope. 

43 24. His cassock and his pudding sleeves, an allusion to the 
customary dress of an Anglican clergyman. ' Pudding,' />. wide -putted. 



b 



116 .VOTES. 

44 11-19. This is more interesting as an illustration of Macaulay's 
love of paradox than convincing as an explanation of the reasons for 
Addison's popularity. 

44 22. Mary Montagu. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (i 687-1 762) 
was for many years one of the most conspicuous figures in English 
society. Of noble blood, and the wife of a distinguished politician, she 
was also something of a writer, and fond of the society of literary men. 
Her friendship with Pope and the subsequent bitter quarrel between 
them are familiar incidents in that poet's life, and occasioned some of 
his bitterest satire. 

44 28. Stella. When Swift left college he became private secre- 
tary to Sir William Temple, and there grew very fond of Esther Johnson, 
the daughter of Temple's housekeeper. She afterwards crossed to 
Ireland to live near Swift, and they were always fast friends. Rumor 
had it that they were secretly married, but the evidence is by no means 
satisfactory. There was never, however, any suspicion of scandal in 
their relations. While Swift was in England he wrote his Journal to 
Stella — a kind of pet name which he always used — keeping her in- 
formed of all the details of his life and movements. 

45 1. Young, Edward (1 681-1765), best known as the author of 
Night Thoughts, is a poet whose somber and meditative genius is less 
esteemed in the present than it was in the last century. 

45 13. Macaulay quotes from Pope's confirmatory allusion to the 
same trait in his famous characterization of Addison : — 

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer. 

45 16. Tatter, No. 163. 
45 17. Spectator, No. 568. 

45 27. When the play ended. Theatrical performances ordinarily 
began in Addison's time at five o'clock, so that at their conclusion the 
evening was still young. 

46 32. Boswell, James (1 740-1 795), was a Scotchman who was so 
impressed with the greatness of Johnson that he left his home and went 
to London to get a sight of him. In the course of time Johnson's favor 
and friendship exalted him to the summit of earthly felicity. He spent 
his days and nights in studying his hero and noting down every word 
that fell from his lips. As a result his Life of Johnson is a masterpiece 
of biography, and Boswellism a synonym of hero-worship. 

46 33. Hurd, Richard, D.D. (1720-1808), Bishop of Worcester, 
edited the works of Bishop Warburton after the death of the latter, 
with a prefatory life of enthusiastic eulogy. 



NOTES. 117 

47 12. He was generally considered insane, and was so pronounced 
by the coroner's jury after his suicide. The crime of which he was 
accused (1. 14) was the forgery of a will. 

47 18. Budgell left on his desk a slip of paper on which was written: — 

What Cato did and Addison approved 
Cannot be wrong. 

47 24. The nickname of ' Namby-Pamby ' was bestowed upon 
Philips in ridicule of some children's verses written by him, one of 
which began : — 

Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling. 

Philips was the author, or rather translator, of the play The Distressed 
Mother, to which Addison takes Sir Roger de Coverley in the Spectator, 
No. 335. The Spectator was not ignorant of the art of puffing. 

47 28 ff. Macaulay in his admiration for Addison is very unfair to 
Steele. Sometimes it is by downright misstatement ; more often by 
false coloring not easy to correct within the limits of these notes. The 
reader is referred to Forster's essay on Steele, published in the Quar- 
terly Review, No. CXCIL, for a detailed answer to Macaulay, and to 
Aitken's Life of Steele (2 vols., pp. 419, 452) for an exhaustive 
biography. 

47 32. Had led a vagrant life. By no means, unless Macaulay 
means that as a soldier he could of course have no permanent place of 
residence. Steele himself tells us that he lost the succession to an Irish 
estate when he went into the army, but military service was far from being 
a social degradation. The army afforded a career for gentlemen ; Steele 
enlisted as a cadet in the Lifeguards, the privates in which were gentle- 
men's sons, and soon became an officer. Within six years of the time 
he left Oxford he was captain in the army, and one of the fashionable 
London wits. No one w T ould guess from the text that when Addison 
returned from his travels he found his old schoolfellow in social stand- 
ing quite his equal, and in literary reputation decidedly his superior. 

48 2 ff. Notice Macaulay's fondness for antithesis, and the dangers 
of such a style. 

48 4. His principles weak. I lis principles were high, and his eon- 
duct above the standard of the age. M Not that Steele was worse than 
his time," says Thackeray; "on the contrary, a far better, truer, and 
higher-hearted man than most who lived in it." {English Humor: 

48 4-6. This is a harsh way of saying that he COttld not live up to 
his ideal; most of us cannot, lint he tried. "Steele committed no 
error which he did not honestly regret, as we know by the pravers and 



IIS NOTES. 

other pieces that have come down to us. . . . The inconsistency which 
was so often evident between his private life and his published writings 
arose from a certain weakness of character ; his purpose was consistently 
good, but he had not always sufficient strength of will to enable him to 
carry it out." (Aitken's Life of Steele, II. 345.) 

48 7. Much of the rake, and a little of the swindler. He was an 
affectionate and, so far as known, a faithful husband at a time when 
fidelity was an unfashionable virtue ; and he respected womanhood, 
and taught others to respect it, in an age which regarded women as 
playthings and considered seduction an amusement. As for the second 
charge, it is true that he was constantly behindhand, and often sued for 
debt ; but swindler is a hard name for a man who, with a large but 
variable income, lives ahead of it, borrows on too confident expecta- 
tions, and gets into the clutches of money-lenders. 

48 11. Diced himself into a sponging-house. This is purely imagi- 
nary. " Steele . . . attacked, with all the vigor of which he was capable, 
the fashionable vice of gambling." (Courthope's Life of Addison, p. 99. 
See Tatler, Nos. 25, 26, 29, 39.) 

48 12. Drank himself into a fever. Steele often drank too much ; 
what has Macaulay just said about Addison ? 

48 13. Not unmingled with scorn. " So much the worse for Addi- 
son, if that be true ; for very certainly he succeeded in concealing it 
from his friend, and, we imagine, from every one but Mr. Macaulay." 
(C. P. Forster, in Qtiarterly Review?) 

48 14. Introduced him to the great. See note on 47 32. 

48 15. Procured a good place for him. See note on 51 24. 

48 21. It is strange that Mr. Aitken has been unable to discover in 
the records of the law-courts, which contain abundant proofs of Steele's 
pecuniary troubles, any evidence of this transaction. But the story is 
confirmed by too many narratives to warrant our rejecting it. The 
most trustworthy account is that given by the actor, Benjamin Victor. 
According to this, Addison intended from the beginning to recover by 
process of law, hoping to teach Steele a lesson. Certainly the latter 
did not lack instruction of this kind. 

4S 34. Fielding's Amelia. Henry Fielding (1707-17 54), one of the 
greatest of English novelists. His best works, Tom fones and the 
History of A?nelia, give a vivid picture of English life in the eighteenth 
century. 

49 11 ff. Macaulay does not pretend that this picture is more than 
imaginary ; it is therefore unnecessary to waste much time over it. 
But it should be noticed that the amount of the loan was, according to 



NOTES. 119 

Victor, not ;£ioo, but ^i.ooo; and it is certain that Addison was in very 
comfortable circumstances at the time when it was made. 

50 26. In Bohn's edition of Addison's works it is stated that the 
Irish Journals contain only eight entries respecting him during the time 
that he sat as member, and that " no actual speeches are there recorded, 
but merely minutes." 

50 33. Westminster. Both Houses of Parliament hold their sessions 
in Westminster Palace. 

51 23. The Gazetteer was the editor of the Gazette, a newspaper 
published by the state. Charles II. established it in 1665, and sup- 
pressed all other newspapers, in order to prevent the publication of 
anything that might hurt the government. The licensing act, the 
means of this suppression, expired in 1695, but the government con- 
tinued the Gazette, supplying it with official information on state affairs. 
It still survives; it appears twice a week, and contains all government 
proclamations, orders, and regulations, and legal notices of various 
kinds. 

51 24. Steele was appointed Gazetteer, " not by Sunderland at the 
request of Addison, as Mr. Macaulay says, but by Harley at the request 
of Maynwaring, as both Swift and Steele inform us." (Forster.) 

51 33, 34. Will's, the Grecian. Two well-known coffee-houses, pat- 
ronized, the first by the wits and the second by scholars. 

52 3. Steele from the beginning attacked vices, and labored to 
improve manners and morals. Macaulay is wrong in representing 
Addison as the leader. " There is scarcely a department of essay- 
writing developed in the Spectator which does not trace its origin to 
Steele." (Courthope's Addison?) 

52 10-17. Steele could not vie with Addison in refinement and ele- 
vation of thought and elegance of manner ; but he is more spontaneous, 
and knew far better how to touch the emotions. His humor is fresh and 
hearty, and is very far from being the mere overflow of animal spirits. 

52 22. Partridge's almanac pretended to predict coming events, his- 
torical as well as meteorological. BickerstafI declared himself to be 
the only one gifted with the power to read the future, ami offered to 
stake his reputation on the prophecy that Partridge would die on a cei 
tain day. The day went by, and a second pamphlet appeared, also 
written by Swift but under another pseudonym, relating how the pro- 
phecy had come true. Poor Partridge was furious; he protested in 
print that he was still alive ami well, but to no avail. Swift assured 
him that he was dead, whatever he might say ; and Partridge W&fl 
snowed under by the pamphlets of the wits. 



120 XOTES. 

52 34 ff. This quotation is from Steele's preface to the first collected 
edition of the Tatler. But it is altogether unfair to take at its face 
value Steele's confession of indebtedness to his friend. On that subject 
his generous enthusiasm always carries him away. Steele wrote 188 
papers to Addison's 42 ; wherever Addison succeeded in a new depar- 
ture it was by following a path which Steele had first struck out ; and if 
Addison's was the finer literary workmanship, Steele's was the richer 
humor, the more genuine pathos, and the warmer heart. "If Steele 
had not furnished Addison with the opportunity for displaying his 
special power, Addison would in all probability have been known to us 
only as an accomplished scholar and poet of no great power. The 
world owes Addison to Steele." (Aitken's Life of Steele, I. 248.) 

53 19. Temple, Sir William (162S-1699), an English diplomatist, 
statesman, and essayist. He was a kinsman of Swift. See note on 

44 aa 

53 23. Horace Walpole (17 17-1797), son of Sir Robert Walpole (see 
note on S9 34), was a literary dilettante, and a lifelong friend of the 
poet Gray. His six volumes of correspondence are full of gossipy 
information. 

S3 24. Half German jargon. Carlyle was at the height of his repu- 
tation when Macaulay wrote this Essay. 

53 29. Menander (342-291 (?) B.C.), a Greek dramatic poet, of whose 
comedies only fragments have been preserved. 

53 31. Cowley (1618-1667), a leader in the seventeenth century 
school of ' conceited ' poets. The characteristics of this school were 
fancy and ingenuity. In their effort for originality and ' wit ' they used 
the most remote analogies, and were often harsh, cold, or obscure. 

Butler (1612-16S0) satirized the Puritans in his Hudibras, to the 
great amusement of Charles II. and his courtiers. 

54 3-6. Not many people would consider that the mere invention of 
fictions, however numerous, or however original or happy, would by 
itself prove a very good title to ' the rank of a great poet.' The crea- 
tion of character which Macaulay praises in 1. 12 would constitute a better 
claim ; but the half satiric, half sympathetic observation of life which pro- 
duces a Sir Roger de Coverley is still far removed from the poetic im- 
agination which gives birth to an Ophelia or a Lear ; and even this im- 
agination would be dumb and ineffectual if unwedded to poetic diction. 

54 11. Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of (1608-1674), father-in-law 
of James II., and virtually Prime Minister under Charles II. ; famous 
also as the author of a history of the war between Charles I. and his 
Parliament. 



NOTES. 121 

54 15. Cervantes (i 547-1616). Author of what immortal work ? 

55 17. Jack Pudding, a juggler who amuses the crowd by feats of 
voracity ; a buffoon. 

55 32, 33. These are all eighteenth century periodicals. 

57 6. Bettesworth, an Irish barrister whom Swift satirized. 

57 7. Le Franc, Marquis de Pompignan, a somewhat conceited 
poet, ventured on his admission to the French Academy to attack the 
philosophers. Voltaire overwhelmed him with ridicule by anonymous 
pamphlets, which made him the laughing-stock of Paris and drove him 
back to his province. 

57 17. Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), an English clergyman, published 
in 1698 a work on the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, 
which attracted wide attention and helped to bring about a much 
needed reformation. 

57 18. Sir George Etherege (i635(?)-i69i) and William Wycherley 
(i64o(?)-i7i5) were two of the worst offenders against decency among 
the Restoration dramatists. Etherege was the first to introduce the 
pure comedy of manners, and Wycherley's work, in spite of its coarse- 
ness and brutality, shows marked dramatic power. 

57 25. John Hale (1 584-1 656) and John Tillotson (1 630-1 694), two 
distinguished Anglican divines, the latter Archbishop of Canterbury. 

57 26. Congreve. See note on 2 16. 

57 27. Vanbrugh (i666(?)-i726), another of the popular dramatists 
who fell under Collier's just censure. 

57 6-10. Tom Folio, Tatler, No. 158. 
Ned Softly, Tatler, No. 163. 

The Political Upholsterer, Tatler, No. 155. 

Court of Honor, Tatler, Nos. 250, 253, 256, 259, 262, 265. But in all 
of the papers on this subject Steele is supposed to have had a hand. 
Thermometer of Zeal, Tatler, No. 220. 
Frozen Words, Tatler, No. 254. 
Memoirs of the Shilling, Tatler, No. 249. 

58 24-26. The absurdity of this statement will be seen by referring 
again to the notes on 52 3, 10-17, 34 ff. 

59 5. Outbreaks due, the first to popular sympathy with Oueen 
Caroline, who was so shamefully treated by her husband, George [V., 
that she left him and in 1820 was brought to trial on a CAfUgS ot 
adultery ; the second to the agitation in favor of the Reform Kill, finally 
carried by Lord John Russell in iS^j. 

59 ir>. Marli. The village of Marly-le-Roi is situated four miles frtin 

the palace of Versailles, and was at times the residence oi 1 ouis \IY. 



122 NOTES. 

59 16. St. James's was the royal residence in London during the 
eighteenth century. 

IS. Sunderland. See note to 40 87. 

59 85. Break his white staff. This is the emblem of office of the 
Lord Treasurer. 

60 6-15. But it must not be forgotten that this same ministry had 
protracted a burdensome and bloody war for their partisan advan:. 
having rejected proposals for peace which conceded to them everything 
for which they had begun hostilities, and that instead of defending 
England the r:e r.ow trying unjustly to conquer France. 

60 12. England and Scotland, though ruled by the same king from 
the accession of James I., were independent countries with separate 
governments until 1707, when the union was peacefully carried 
through. 

60 17-20. Macao! a good Whig, and liked to remind the 
Tories of their failures. Both the War of American Independence and 
the Napoleonic wars took place under Tor}- rule. It was during the 
latter that an English army was sent, in 1S09, to seize Antwerp. The 
expedition was disgracefully mismanaged, and the troops, left on the low 
isle of Walcheren, were was:r . ise until they were good for 
nothing. The failure of the enterprise caused the resignation from the 
ministry of Canning and Castlereagh, who fought a duel over the ques- 
tion of responsibih: 

61 6. That he must think of turning tutor again. This seems 
incredible. In this same year he bought his Bilto:. hich cost 
him ;£ 10,000. He must have saved a good deal of money from the 
emoluments of office, and the S; - veil. His brother 
had died in the Indies two years before, and left him a large estate ; 
but it was badly managed, and yielded him but little. This is probably 
the fortune which Addison said he had lost. 

61 IS. Whig corporations. The government of many of the towns 
was then in the hands of corporations, which were not elected by the 
citizens, but were self-perpetuating. These corporations selected the 
members of Parliament for their towns. 

62 11. There is no reason for thinking that Steele owed his reten- 
tion in the Commissionership to Addison, as Macaulay implies. Swift 
believed that it was his influence with Harley that saved Steele, though 
the latter denied that this was true. 

62 -26. This is another illustration of Macaulay's persistent belittling 
of Steele. 

62 33, 34. See note on SI 33, 34. 



NOTES. 123 

63 15-24. Mr. Courthope in his Life of Addison argues that, as the 
Spectator paper was the joint enterprise of Addison and Steele, and as 
the Spectator Club is the framework of the whole design, its general 
outline must have been planned by both of them together. After quot- 
ing Macaulay's words in the text, he says : " This is a very misleading 
account of the matter. It implies that the characters in the Spectator 
were mere casual conceptions of Steele's ; that Addison knew nothing 
about them till he saw Steele's rough draft ; and that he, and he alone, is 
the creator of the finished character of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, as 
a matter of fact, the character of Sir Roger is full of contradictions and 
inconsistencies ; and the want of unity which it presents is easily 
explained by the fact that it is the work of four different hands. ... It 
had evidently been predetermined by the designers of the Spectator that 
the Club should consist of certain recognized and familiar types ; the 
different writers, in turns, worked on these types, each for his own pur- 
pose and according to the bent of his own genius. " But Addison was 
nevertheless, as Macaulay says, the creator of Sir Roger as we know 
him. As Mr. Courthope says, " Steele gave the first sketch of Sir 
Roger in a few rough but vigorous strokes, which were afterwards 
greatly refined and altered by Addison." 

63 32, 33. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett. The English novel 
dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, when the works of 
these three great writers appeared. Richardson (1689-1761), " the 
father of the English novel," was first in the field, with his Fame/a, in 
1640. This led Fielding (see note on 48 34) to write his Joseph Andrews, 
begun as a satire on Pamela, but completed with slight reference to 
that design. In 1748 came Tom Jo7ies, the greatest book of the whole 
period. Smollett (1721-1771) began to write in 1749, when Roderick 
Random appeared. Other famous novels of his are Peregrine Pickle 
and Humphrey Clinker. 

64 9. The Mohawks. These were bands of dissolute young men 
who infested the streets of London at night, diverting themselves with 
such pleasant amusements as beating or mutilating citizens and rolling 
women down hill in barrels. 

64 10. The Distressed Mother. See note on 47 94. 

64 31, 32. This is an extreme statement, as Mr. Forster shows in 
detail ; and yet, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says, " there can be no doubt that 
Addison's essays were those which achieved the widest popularity. 
which are still remembered when the old Spectator IS mentioned, ami 
which were the admiration of all the critics of the eighteenth century." 
(' Addison ' in Dictionary of National Biography!) 



124 .VOTES. 

65 23-27. Nos. 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 343, 517. 

66 13. The stamp tax. This was imposed by the Tories in 17 12, 
and was intended to lessen the number of publications and so to cut off 
some of the attacks on the government. It required a half-penny 
stamp on each printed half-sheet. Only the strongest papers could live 
under so heavy a tax. 

67 9. The Guardian. See note on 19 17. 

67 15. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards. These characters 
fill in the Guardian the position held in the Spectator by the members 
of the Spectator Club. 

68 9. No attempt was then made at accurate historical costuming. 
68 15. Booth, Barton (1681-1733), made his reputation in the part 

of Cato as the leading actor of his time. 

6S 18. The Inns of Court. Four buildings (Gray's Inn, Lincoln's 
Inn, The Inner Temple, and The Middle Temple) owned and occupied 
by the London barristers. 

6S 20. The territory within the limits of the original city of London 
is the business center of the metropolis. The " auxiliaries from the 
City " were therefore made up of representatives of the commercial 
class, who were not supposed to know much about literature. 

6S 22. Jonathan's and Garraway's, two coffee-houses frequented 
by brokers and merchants. 

68 33. Kit-Cat. See note on IS 17. 

6S 34. The October Club was made up of Tories, and represented 
the extreme wing of the party. 

69 30. Bolingbroke. See note on 40 30. 

70 24. Athalie. See note on IS 26. 

Saul. The most successful play of Vittorio Alfieri( 1 749-1803), a great 
Italian dramatist who followed the classic model. " He occupies his 
scene with one great action and one ruling passion, and removes from 
it every accessory event or feeling." (Enc. Brit.) 

Of Cinna, which was written by Corneille, the same work says that 
it is " perhaps generally considered the poet's masterpiece, and it 
undoubtedly contains the finest single scene in all French tragedy, a 
scene which may take rank with any other perhaps ever written." 
Cato can claim no such praise as this. But Macaulay seems to under- 
estimate the whole school. 

71 32. It may be, as Macaulay says, that Pope was more galled by 
the censure than gratified by the praise, but it is not likely ; and, 
further, there is not the slightest particle of evidence for it. On the 
contrary, Pope's expressions certainly show gratitude for the favorable 



NOTES. 125 

notice, which was, he says, so lavish of praise as to make him hope it 
indicates a particular partiality to himself. This letter was sent, not to 
Addison, whom Pope did not know at the time, but to Steele, whom he 
regarded as the author of the criticism ; and it led to his introduction 
to Addison. 

72 4. Whom he had injured without provocation. This is another 
assumption. Dennis had very likely criticised Pope's Pastorals, and 
so drawn upon himself Pope's ridicule in the Essay on Criticism, 
vv. 585-587: — 

But Appius reddens at each word you speak, 
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye, 
Like some old tyrant done in tapestry. 

Dennis's reply to these three comparatively innocent lines was an abusive 
pamphlet of thirty-two pages, in which he called Pope a ' hunchbacked 
toad,' * a little affected hypocrite,' ' the very bow of the god of love,' etc. 

73 20-23. Here again Macaulay is altogether too hard on Steele. 
His friends, it is true, were inclined to regret his abandonment of the 
Guardian in order to devote himself to political writing ; but there was 
no lack of respect in their comments on his conduct. He was, of 
course, virulently attacked and calumniated by the Tory writers. 

76 26, 27. As Swift grew older his pessimism and fierce hatred of 
society increased, and his last years were darkened by terrible suffering 
and mental disease. In 1708 Swift was in the full strength and vigor 
of middle life, influential and active among men; in 1738 he was over 
seventy, and descending through a lonely and wretched old age to his 
most pitiable end. 

76 34. Swift's Tale of a Tub, which was written as a satire on abuses 
in the Church, was regarded as an attack on the Christian religion 
itself. It is supposed to have roused the hostility of Queen Anne, and 
so to have made Swift's elevation to a bishopric impossible. 

77 4. Sacrificed honor and consistency to revenge. See note on 
43 17. Undoubtedly personal motives had their influence on Swift, 
but there is no occasion for saying that his change of party was entirely 
due to them. 

77 32. More odious than any other man, because he was suspected 
of having been concerned in the plot to bring back the Stuarts to the 
throne, which some of the Tory leaders had formed. Within a \\\\ 
years, however, Swift was very popular in Ireland. 

78 31. But Steele asserts positively, in the letter to Congreve pre 
fixed to the second edition of the play, that Addison was its author. 



126 NOTES. 

79 4. In 171 5 a rising took place in Scotland in favor of the Stuart 
Pretender, — the rebellion described in Scott's novel of Rob Roy. 

79 12. Squire Western, in Fielding's novel, Tom Jones. 

SO 1. He accordingly determined, etc. The absurdity of represent- 
ing that Steele started the Town Talk because he was dissatisfied with 
the moderation of the Freeholder is evident when we remember that the 
first number of the Freeholder appeared on December 23, and of the Town 
Talk on December 17. Nor is it remarkable that the latter has not been 
handed down to fame, since only nine numbers of it appeared. 

50 11. Pope was false and malevolent. In the case of Pope, as of 
Steele, we must guard against Macaulay's characterization of him. To 
give to Pope's sensitive and morbid nature and strangely mixed charac- 
ter the right interpretation called for a skill in reading motives which 
Macaulay, with all his powers, did not possess. He had the historic, 
but not the dramatic, imagination ; he did not hold the key to the 
human heart. It is easy to paint Pope black ; and Macaulay admits 
into his picture no other color. Yet the injustice is hard to correct, 
because his mistake lies, not in a misstatement, but in a misinterpreta- 
tion, of facts. Pope's treatment of his friends cannot always be called 
honorable according to our standards ; he was unfortunately fond of 
equivocation, and not afraid of downright falsehood ; and those who 
injured him he hated with a rancorous and uncontrolled vindictiveness ; 
and still he should not be called unqualifiedly false and malevolent. 
See Thackeray's essay on Pope in English Humorists of the Eighteenth 
Century. 

80 19. The Rosicrucian mythology. See Pope's letter to Miss 
Arabella Fermor prefixed to the Rape of the Lock. 

80 20. He asked Addison's advice. It is not at all unlikely that 
this anecdote is fictitious, and invented by Pope to strengthen his case 
against Addison. 

81 25. See note on 21 25. 

51 26-29. This also is doubtful. It is one of Spence's anecdotes 
(see note on 19 8), and was related to him by Pope, whose veracity 
cannot be relied upon. 

81 33 ff. This whole story Macaulay takes from Pope's account to 
Spence. With regard to it Mr. Courthope says : " It is scarcely neces- 
sary to say that, after the light that has been thrown on Pope's charac- 
ter by the detection of the frauds he practised in the publication of his 
correspondence, it is impossible to give any credence to the tales he 
poured into Spence's ear, tending to blacken Addison's character and 
to exalt his own." 



NOTES. Ill 

82 32. There is no question, however, of the great merits of Pope's 
Iliad as an independent poem, great as are its defects as a translation. 

83 14. There does seem to have been in circulation a vague rumor 
that Tickell was not the real author of his Translation. See Elwin 
and Courthope's edition of Pope's Works y Vol. V. p. 158. 

84 32, 33. Satirist, Age. Two unprincipled papers which, at the 
time when Macaulay was writing his essay, had become notorious by 
the publication of sensational and scandalous news. The editor of 
the Age was soon after sent to prison for criminal libel. 

85 12. See note on 44 22. 

85 27. Pope had had privately printed for Bolingbroke a book 
written by the latter, and had ordered the printer to strike off and keep 
a large number of additional copies, after having, according to Boling- 
broke, introduced various alterations. 

86 6. This whole story is probably apocryphal. See Courthope's 
Life of Addison, pp. 135-138. 

86 25. Pope wished it to be believed that he sent the lines to Addi- 
son, but it is not at all likely that he did, or that Addison ever saw them. 
They first appeared in print in 1722, and Pope was accused of having 
written them after Addison's death. Pope, of course, wished to show 
that Addison was in fault for the quarrel, and that his own conduct had 
been entirely honorable. The lines w T ere afterwards included in the 
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and are as follows : — 

Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ; 
Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike ; 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 
Alike reserved to blame or to commend, 
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; 
Like Cato, give his little senate laws. 
And sit attentive to his own applause ; 
While wits and templars every sentence raise, 



128 NOTES. 

And wonder with a foolish face of praise : 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? 

86 34. But his praise of Pope is always with some reserve, and does 
not equal that bestowed on such minor writers of his coterie as Philips 
and Tickell. 

87 10. Addison's field w r as social, not personal satire. He is always 
good-humored and without passion ; and he was no more Pope's match 
than a non-combatant with a taste for archery is a match for a trained 
duelist. 

87 15. Joseph Surface is a hypocritical professor of youthful virtue 
and sober-headedness in Sheridan's comedy, The School for Scandal. 
Sir Peter Teazle is another character in the same play. 

88 10. Countess Dowager, i.e. the widowed mother of the heir to 
the title. 

88 13. Holland House. With this historic mansion Macaulay him- 
self had close associations, for he was a frequent visitor there during 
the life of the third Lord Holland, when Lady Holland's drawing- 
rooms used to number among their distinguished guests many men of 
letters. Holland House was built in 1607 by Henry Rich, Earl of Hol- 
land, from w T hom it took its name, and whose descendant, Edw T ard 
Rich, Earl of Warwick and Holland, had been the first husband of the 
Countess Dowager, Addison's wife. This family becoming extinct, the 
house passed into other hands, and though its later owners again bore 
the title of Holland, it was by a new patent. Macaulay in his Essay 
on Lord Holland speaks with feeling of " those turrets and gardens 
which are associated with so much that is interesting and noble — with 
the courtly magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the 
counsels of Cromwell, with the death of Addison . . . that dwelling . . . 
the favorite resort of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of 
scholars, philosophers, and statesmen." 

88 14. Nell Gwynn, an actress who became mistress of Charles II. 

89 5. Lycidas. What were the circumstances which led Milton to 
write his great poem of this name ? 

89 11. See note on 61 6. 

89 15. William Somervile (1677-1742), a country gentleman and 
minor poet, whose most important work, The Chase, celebrates the 
joys of hunting with dogs, in about 2000 lines of Miltonic blank verse. 

89 29-34. The old Whig leaders, Godolphin, Halifax, Somers, and 
Wharton, were now dead, and besides, it was the policy of George I. to 
place in power the younger men. Lord Townshend (1 674-1 738) had 



NOTES. 129 

not in the previous reign been in the cabinet, but had won distinction 
by his negotiation of the so-called ' barrier treaty ' with Holland, while 
on an embassy to that country. The Tories attacked him bitterly for 
this, but when George I. came in he gave Townshend the leading place 
in his Whig ministry. Sunderland, jealous of his power, succeeded in 
undermining his influence with the King, whom Townshend offended 
by his reluctance to support the continental interests of the House of 
Hanover at England's expense ; and the minister was consequently 
dismissed. 

Sir Robert Walpole (i 676-1 745) was Townshend's brother-in-law, 
and though he had been in the cabinet in Godolphin's ministry, and 
was really the ablest of all the Whigs, he held decidedly a second place. 
On Townshend's dismissal Walpole resigned, and though both of them 
were afterwards admitted to office again under Sunderland, it was not 
until the ruin of that minister by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble 
in 1 72 1 that they took a leading part in the government. From that 
time on Walpole for more than twenty years held power as Prime 
Minister. 

90 12. Vincent Bourne. See note on 21 32. 

90 17. Craggs, James (1 686-1 721), won his way in politics by his 
capacity for business and his skill in debate. He was, like Sunder- 
land, implicated in the affairs of the South Sea Company. See also 
the mention of him on 94 27 ff. 

90 23. In Macaulay's day this allusion was instantly understood. 
Joseph Hume (1777-18 55) was a prominent Liberal, who during a life- 
time of parliamentary service devoted himself especially to cutting off 
extravagant or unnecessary expenditures. 

91 10. Mr. Courthope doubts the report of Addison's domestic 
infelicity. See Life of Addison^ p. 147. 

91 14. House of Rich. See note on 8S 13. 

92 26-31. In the year 171 1 the Tory ministry, although supported 
by a large majority in the House of Commons, found themselves unable 
to carry out their policy because of the opposition of the House of 
Lords, where the Whigs were in control. To break the deadlock 
between the two Houses the Queen was persuaded by Ilarlev to create 
twelve new peers, all Tories, thus swamping the majority 'unfavorable 
to the ministry. 

94 6. The Duenna, a very popular comedy written by Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1S16), and first acted in 1 77s- 

94 12-15. It is interesting to note that when Maeaulav fust wrote 
the essay he did not know that Morris was the actor alluded tQ as 



130 ATOTFS. 

'little Dicky,' but nevertheless had the sagacity to interpret aright the 
passage on which his predecessor had stumbled. The sentence in the 
text first appeared as follows : — 

" Little Dicky was evidently the nickname of some comic actor who played the 
usurer Gomez, then a most popular part, in Dryden's Spaiiish FriarP 

To this sentence Macaulay appended the following note: — 

" We will transcribe the whole paragraph. How it can have been misun- 
derstood is unintelligible to us. 

" But our author's chief concern is for the poor House of Commons, whom 
he represents as naked and defenseless, when the crown by losing this preroga- 
tive, would be less able to protect them against the power of a House of 
Lords. Who forbears laughing when the Spa?iis/i Friar represents little 
Dicky, under the person of Gomez, insulting the colonel that was able to 
fright him out of his wits with a single frown ? This Gomez, says he, flew 
upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil being strong in him, and 
gave him bastinado on bastinado and buffet on buffet, which the poor colonel, 
being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience. The improbability 
of the fact never fails to raise mirth in the audience ; and one may venture 
to answer for a British House of Commons, if we may guess from its con- 
duct hitherto, that it will scarce be either so tame or so weak as our author 
supposes." 

94 18. This is far from true. The pamphlets (there were in all 
four Plebeians and two Old Whigs) are for the most part purely argu- 
mentative ; but Addison was the first to allude to the personality of his 
antagonist, and introduced an unnecessary fling at an unlucky business 
venture in which Steele had engaged. Steele's reply is neither undigni- 
fied nor unkind. 

95 1-13. This anecdote also is derived from Spence's conversations 
with Pope, and is therefore suspicious. 

Gay, John ( 1 685-1 732), a plump, good-natured little bard, who made 
two clever hits in light opera, and enjoyed the warm friendship of Pope. 

96 28. The Jerusalem Chamber is on the southwest side of West- 
minster Abbey, and is the meeting place of the Upper House of Con- 
vocation of the Province of Canterbury. It takes its name from the 
tapestries, worked with scenes from the history of Jerusalem, which 
formerly hung on its walls. 

97 10-13. This praise is hardly merited. The piece has real feeling, 
but no remarkable power ; and we have only to name such poems as 
Lycidas, Adonais, and In Memoriam to appreciate the distance by 
which it is removed from the work of the great poets. 

98 7. Spectator, No. 72, and Nos. 584, 585. 



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